I often wonder about the common opinion that Radial tires are not cool or vintage/trad/whatever. I researched the web a bit and found some info that suggests that radial tires began to appear on cars in Europe as early as 1948. So when were they first used on p***enger vehicles here in the US? Which manufacturer was first? When did they become the standard tire for p***enger cars in the US? BTW: This stems from my ongoing debate as to whether or not I should dump my bi-ply's for comfy radials on the Lincoln. Please discuss, debate, ponder, and/or pontificate.
This is a thread I will be watching for sure! I had bias ply on my 49 caddy...on cold days that I would take it for a ride in town (brick crosswalks) i would think I was going to die...and taking it to Bakersfield I would be scared to death from the tracking... When I switched it to radials it was like a new car...never again will I have bias ply. I like living too much and I would be scared to death to have my kid/girlfriend/her kids in the car with bias ply! maybe my bias ply were just wore out...but boy did they scare me! I will do some digging around and see if I can figure out when they started showing up in the US...I have some friends that have worked in a tire factory and have other generations that have worked in tire factory forever so I will ask them what they know too.
p***engercars in the us had biasply up to 1964 for sure. 1963 i can prove. Still has the orignl factory biasply tire in the trunk that is a 7.50X14.
LOTUS: I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. I drive a 60 lincoln uni-boday that weighs a bizzillion pounds and runs on 14" rims. Bias plays on that thing while cornering on a road with any kind of grating... is a reason for attending church every sunday. BUT STILL... the bi-ply piecrust do look cool.
I put my first set of radials on my 1966 GTO in 1967, got em a sears, they were Michelin (sp). I'm a firm believer in them. I do agree that on fenderless cars the Bias looks better but the ride is the thing for me. BB
Read about Michelin inventing, and holding a patent on Radial tires here; http://www.michelin.com/corporate/front/templates/affich.jsp?codeRubrique=19&lang=EN Select time frame in the chronology at the bottom of the page. Radial was invented in '46 and marketed first on the Citroen 2CV in '48... Ironically the "Last year for a hot rod"... and most of the european car makers started using them by '55. NO one else COULD make a radial because of the Michelin patent so the rest of the world's tire makers bad mouthed them as being "bad for cars not designed for them" and other myths, until the patent expired. Then they all jumped on the radial steel band wagon. Since radials were "state of the art" in Europe in the '50s and "real" hotrodders then were into experimenting with the latest technology, instead of shunning it like a plague, there had to be at least some rodders running radials in the 50's.
Bias weren't completely phased out until the mid- late 70s. My 71 Nova had them stock. There was a real good article about the construction and introduction of bias-plies in an engineering trade mag I read not too long ago. I know I have it at work, so I'll look it up tomorrow. d
Radials didn't make it onto p***ener cars in m*** production until the early '70's. I don't know what year exactly, but have bias ply rating's for new tires on my '73 Caprice. They may have put them on some cars before that, but not in m*** produced vehicles. Also, early radials couldn't be rotated the way you think tires should be rotated. They actually wore themselves into a pattern. That is, if you put radials on your car you couldn't change them from side to side. They wore in a direction and if you reversed the direction of early radials they would, literally, fall apart inside from being driven in the opposite direction. When you changed them from wheel to wheel you had to mark the direction in which they traveled so you didn't get them on backwards. I have actually had some early radials fall apart like this. It's like the insides just come apart. This being said, I run radials, they track better, ride better, last longer and are much easier to find anywhere. I like tradition, but I like safety too and radials are safer and drive better. I'm sure I'll get some **** for this post, but what the hey. Just my opinion.
DR J: Thanks for the info. If I'm hearing you correctly.... it sounds like radials would indeed have been a hot item for rodders back in the day simply because of their performance benefits. Are you suggesting that radial tires would have been accepted willingly by many hot rodders had they been available 1 or 2 decades earlier... and therefore.... the modern day "traditional" rod/custom community should be more accepting of them? Just wondering as I sip a cup of late night java
when I was a kid in the 60s our 1964 Citroen ID19 had Michelin radials on it, people would point at the tires to let us know they were low on air! because that's how radials look compared to bias ply. In the 60s the only size radials you could get would fit VWs or similar cars with very skinny tires. I ran bias ply tires on my American iron till the early to mid 80s. Hot rods generally had bias ply because you couldn't get wide radials, and if you did they'd cost a lot to replace (especially if you smoke them at every opportunity like we used to) then again, I always thought the wide whites look kinda silly.....
Damn Goozgaz you sure are trying to rationalize putting some radials on your ride while holding on to some traditional hot rod belifes. Hehehe
My applejack running buddy had them on his '55 Ford in '58 around Seattle, special ordered them, probably the bigger sizes that were used on Jag sedans. Cops had bias and couldn't catch him. To me, radials look out of place on fenderless 40's-50's style car. If you were building a car purely for performance, you wouldn't use outdated technology in the first place, and you wouldn't be reading this.
I cant remember the year but I bought a set of douglas fiberglas belted, wide ovals and put them on the back of a 62 ford fairlane . they were called radials because of the belts not sure they were tru radials but my first set of tru radials were a wedding gift from a friend . I put them on a 1966 ford fairlane that I bought new and it coudnot have been over a year and half old at the time .
Pontiac was first in the US to offer "Radial Tuned Suspension" in 72. I think Holden in Au offered it in the late 60's. By the late 70's nearly every new p***enger car came with radials.
The first radials were developed by Michelin and were marketed in 1946 as the X-Tire (or Tyre). XWXs were soon adopted by Ferrari, a**** others, but repops cost almost $400 from Coker. --Matt
I know. I know. I just like some modern comfort accessories. I like the feel of radials... AND DAMN'IT CUP HOLDERS KICK ***!!!!!!! There I said it. I feelbetter now. Can somebody hug me?
I won't hug you, but I'll pat your back, and say "there, there" like a friend should. Bias tires look great, but they hadle terrible. The Buick LeSabre I had them on wandered all over the highway, and followed every single groove. They also didn't corner well. About they only good thing I can think of is that they wear out quickly so that you can put radials on them when they're shot. Use radials. You car will still be traditional with me.
I think those smileys are doing a bit more than hugging too. Becarefull the christians might ban you like sponge bob.
We do a lot of things to our so-called traditional hotrods and customs today that weren't commonly done in the 40s-50s-60s like electronic ignition and CD players in the trunk, and LOTS OF bob-tailed late 30s trucks with little to no bed and channeled so low the body is only an inch or two off the ground. I'm sure, SOMEONE did that, but he didn't get past the first cop in town without having to raise it back up again. As I'm equally sure that SOMEONE bought a Porsche, or Mercedes or Citroen, or even a VW in Europe with radial tires, liked them and decided they were what he wanted on all his cars. In fact, I remember a neighbor when I was a kid,probabaly around '58 or '59 who put Michelins on his Mercury when it needed tires. He was an engineer or a physicist or a math teacher or some weird type of person like that.. So, the tires were available, not common, but available, and it is therefore reasonable to think someone also put them on a custom... Just to be different. I started driving (legally) in '65 and got my first car a short time after that, and I usually traded cars when and/or because they needed "high dollar" items like tires or a battery but when I did get stuck buying tires, they were always radials. I don't remember and don't think I will ever buy a bias ply tire, unless I'm restoring a Packard or some other Museum dust catcher that isn't going to get wrung out on Mullholland Highway anyway. Ya see, I may not be big on drag racing, but I love the rush of making it around dead mans curve, and radials are what it takes. The thing about radials not being "compatible" with older cars has to do with the way they grip the road, without squeeling, and whether or not the car has a high or low roll center. Radials tend to not squeal, they just hang on until they p*** their point of adhesion and can't anymore and then all of a sudden just let go and the car spins. Bias ply tires, start squealing long before they reach that slide point, telling you audibly that they aren't liking the situation. Most newer IFS cars have low, ground level or lower roll centers so the lean of the car tells the driver he's pushing it, but you put radials on a car or truck with parallel leafs and high roll centers at both ends, and maybe Z the frame at both ends further lowering the Center of Gravity like so many rods are these days, it's entirely possible to have the car leaning INTO a turn instead of leaning out, so you don't have any warning of when it's going to let go and spin. It IS going to be way faster than with bias ply, but the radials just won't tell you audibly. This isnt the case with the 60' Lincoln. It has a low roll center and leans just fine and would be great with radials. I put a set of Aramid radial ply Vogue tires, the ones with the diamonds in the whitewall and the gold stripe outside it, on my '55 Olds. and drove it 12 years on them. Other than the time I was doing about 70 in the rain on the Ventura freeway and hydroplaned for about a 1/4 mile they were great! I hae rdials on my '40 GMC and have carved more than a handfull of canyons with it wishing the Model T or whatever, running biasplys, squealing around the bends in front of me wouldn't be such a wus going into the turns...
In 1958 my dad purchased an ID 19 Citroen for himself and a 2CV for my mother. Both came with Michelin radials. Dad had a bad cut one day on one of his tires and replaced the whole set. I took two of them and mounted them on the front of my '40 Ford Tudor. (still had the bias plys on the back, which made for some very interesting handling!) The one thing I will always remember, is when people p***ed the '40 when standing still, they would say, "Hey son; you got a LOW tire on the front!" As much as bias plys look "trad"; I use radials on everything I drive. I have them on my '41 Ford Stake Bed Delivery, my old '68 Plymouth Road Runner had them, My '62 Ford wagon used them, plus the '28 A Tudor project that's sitting on them waiting for it's first "drive."
I don't think the question is about how long they still did and are making bias ply tires. The question is when/how early radials were available to put on cars, any cars, And that was definitly in the 50's.
YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm going with radials... I'm putting in a cup holder... and if I get any more grey hairs I'm dying them the same color as Boyd's beard. All together now: "WE'RE HERE... WE LIKE THE WAY RADIALS STEER... AND WE'RE NOT GONNA DISAPPEAR!" "BEER & HOT COFEE ALL IN MY LAP.... CUP HOLDER, CUP HOLDER... THAT'S WHAT WE LACK!!"
I was looking out behind the garage,yanking down the neighbor's ivy that's growing over the fence and up over the garage roof and found a Chevy rim with a 195-75-14 Michelin X tire on it... And it holds air! still got half the tread left too. Now they came out with the XZX in '67 so this tire is...OLD! Just wish I had a mate to it I'd run it on the Elky.
DrJ I recall the ol' man running Pirelli's in the late 50s (probably '58 or 9), they didn't have steel belts. I don't think the steel belt thing came around 'til later than that. But the ol man was different than most of us, he ran disc brakes when according to the m***es no one did. The first set of Steel Belted radials that I recall or know for a fact that they were steel belted was in the late 60s or early 70s when we threw a set of Michelin X radials on a '67 mailbu that my mom was driveing.
Right, I was trying to play on words but forgot one... It was supposed to say "Steel DRUM BAND wagon" get it? steel drums? Oh well, sit down is just as hard as stand up commedy I guess...
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