Allright so I re-read the thread in the tech archive and have it tried on some junk tires I had. I am now ready to a set for my car. My question is has anyone had better luck,or a better looking whitewall from a certain tire brand? Or are they all about the same? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
I ground a set Thursday. I've got 215/65r15 on the front and 235/70r15 on the rear. The tires are Cooper Cobra Radial GT's. These are white letter tires with no whitewall at all until exposed. When finished I had a great looking set of www's. The 215's made a 1 7/8" whitewall and the 235's were a full 2 inches. Nice thing is they finished real clean too. No irregular edges.
I use a Clapp whitewall grinding machine made in the 1930's-40's. My local Firestone dealer orders me Firestone 721's (discontinued line) from some surplus place. I use P225-75R15's at $35/ea, and get a 2-1/4" smooth whitewall with my Clapp machine. There is a bit of browning at the very edge after high speed driving, but for $140 per set (and they last 50K mi.), who's complaining!? Not me. There is a difference in whitewall cross sectional types! The best-grinding whitewall type has flat sides in x-section. Firestone 721's have this type. Most of the other tires I've evaluated have an "oval" x-section that does not grind as well, yielding a "wavy" ground edge. My suggestion is go to the discard tire stack of any tire shop and use a knife to cut the sidewalls of junked tires to expose the cross-section of the whitewall inlay. This will give you an idea as to brand and model of tire to grind.
i used a set of firestone FR340's with the thin white wall. they are pretty easy to grind down. i used a 'twisted' wirewheel on an angle grinder & started by grinding the stripe down even with the sidewall & then worked my way in toward the bead & then from the center of the sidewall out toward the tread. they look pretty good but the edge of the white is a tad on the uneven side. they look pretty decent until you get super close & inspect them from 2' away. i really cant complain for $35 per tire. they ride really nice & have a pretty decent all season tread on them too. good luck!
Yo Sweats, when are you gonna be in Daytona? I don't have your number anymore. I'll pm you. The tire grinding is super easy, half brained chimps can do it whilst flinging poo with their 'free' hand, so it should be no problem for a genius such as yourself. I used a low speed Sears 7" polisher/sander with an 80 grit aluminum oxide disc. Just jack up the tire you're doing and go easy either up or down until all the white's exposed. Then do another spot, keep going and in about 20 minutes you'll have one tire cut. Do the remaining 3 and you're gonna pull chicks like I do.
Howdy, Cody Adams from Adams Hot Rod Rubber, I have some pics I can show you. We use a machine that was made for grinding whitewalls and have had fare results but far from perfect We have started using only certain casing,sizes and brands in our recap shop. I have tried to buff the whitewalls on these tires and here is the specs. And mind you none of these tires were perfect, they all had at least on area on the whitewall that had a blem. MICHELIN XCLT4 235/70/15 buffed to 1 3/4" wide GOOD LTXMS 235/75/15 buffed to 1 3/4" wide GOOD UNIROYAL TIGER PAW 235/75/15 buffed to 2 1/4" wide BEST GOODYEAR WRANGLER RTS 31/10.50/15 buffed to 2" wide GOOD MICHELIN LTX 255/70/16 buffed to 2" with lots of blems BAD
Thanks fellas! Lots of good advice so I can pull the chicks with Nads!..haha --Nads I gotta work Fri and Sat so I wont be at Daytona but I shot ya PM with my number. Talk to you soon
I TOO!! GOBLE GOBLE GOBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I wanted too add that I had seen someone on here talk about using Snow Roof. I thought that was an original idea Well I went down to Home Depot and picked some up, have been testing it out and I believe with a properly prepped surface is quite durable and is getting as good of results as those pictures with that German Dude!!!! One gallon can was $20.00 What I am doing is sealing the tire after the sidewall has been buffed so the pores of the rubber are still open, this is being done within 24 hours of having the sidewall buffed then I wipe the area to be painted with rubber solvent, that stuff is $100.00 for a 5 gallon bucket, I think you would have to go to a store that handels tire equipment to purchase that. And I am not thinning it out, it is water based so it cleans up easy, dries fairly smoothly and dries fast if done in a warm area, Usally will do about 4 thin coats. After the last on dries I take the brush and with just water smmoth out the product already on the tire. This really smooths out the brush marks. Then after it has dried for a couple of days I hose the hell out of it with ARMORALL!!!! That really slicks the surface out and I think helps protect the snow roof. I am still perfecting this method, not saying this way works but it may be a inexspensive way to obtaining wide whites!!!!!
What the heck is snow roof???? I dont think they sell that here in Fla but I am gonna look. And if they laugh at me at Home Depot there will be hell to pay..hahahah
The pics are on a different computer, but Dunlop Rover AT 215/75-15s have a little over 2" wide white strip under the white letters, I used the exact same grinder and disc as Nads, they leave about 3/4" from the rim black. They sell snow roof at the Depot... they use it on mobile home roofs too. I'm stuck here at home for TRR too.
Yo!!! Here are pics of kustomscaraudio's 30x10x16 that I have done the Sno Roof treatment to. It has worked great on this application. But I was quick to paint after buffing, used thin coats, multiple times, and made sure that surface was clean as a nun's backside.
clean as a nuns backside? HMMMM.. but that roof stuff they sell here in vegas. i used it on many mobile home roofs. never thought of it for tires though.
man, i just can't wait to get these mounted up on my americans!!! i wonder if the wife will mind these in the living room?
i used a rubberized paint for painting pools..............it looked really well but soon turned an ol dingy yellowish brown color........it actually made it look really old ...but wasnt to durable..................
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