Coker Tires - Is it just me??

Yeh,but when is SOON?---

 

I'm calling them tomorrow.

 

Let us know what you find out.

 

Good!--Let us know what they say

 

Wow, those look great, but I bet they will break the bank.

 

Do these concerns about questionable QC pertain to the radials from Coker, or is this primarily a bias ply issue? I need to buy some wide whites for my Lincoln soon, and being out of the US, I'd rather not have to ship tires back and forth.

 

The only reason for radial tires is that they are cheaper to make? Tire company propaganda? Wow! the things you learn on H.A.M.B.

 

I have a friend that has 2 really nice "street rods" a 39 Ford coupe and a 41 Ford convertible. He has Coker Classic W/W's on the coupe and Diamondback W/W's on the convertible. He likes them both,but says the W/W on the diamondbacks are far superior to the Cokers

 

cfnutcase; that don't make much since to me. If I buy a NEW tire & have it mounted & balanced, I than will need to drive it down the road to determine if everything is ok. If I have done everything possible to get it corrected & than it is still determined it is a bad tire "with documentation", the tire company had better take it back. Or are you saying that mew tires have no guarantee of performance? That's a crock,. "But if I drove the tire for weeks before I sent it back, well than I would have nothing to complain about. But if I notify the tire company right away, he better stand behind his tire.
Buying tires at swap meets has nothing to do with buying MEW tires from a reputable dealer. If you have to send a tire back with documentation that it has defects, it should never be re-sold again. A repeatable tire company should never want to take a chance that a secant buyer will have problems with the same tire. It's a tax write off anyways, & good business to keep customers coming back. Life is not perfect & shit does happen, but if the dealer blames me & try's to screw me, he will never see me again. & as you should know, bad talk is bad advertisement. Coker or any other tire dealer should want there name to be herd all over as the best people to do business with.

 

There is a dry polymer tire balancing powder called Equal that can be used in tube type tires. They make a setup to use air to push it into the tire or tube through the valve stem but I've done it with an old time plastic ketchup dispenser. We use it in truck tires, especially large flotation tires.

http://www.chemco.ca/Products/Wheel_Balancing/balance_powder.htm

 

The US tire companies had to make radial tires to stay competitive with the Europeans who were making them for years. I remember tire company race tire wars,Goodyear claiming that radial racing tires would never work. Michelin won a championship with them and showed them. BF Goodrich said radial motorcycle tires could not be made to work. Well look what we have now. You can't beat radial tires. Modern performance radial tires are better than the best racing tires of the 60s and 70s.



Ago

 

had lots of them balanced and shaved found it was the rear tires that needed spin balanced on the car

 

Back in the 50's there was damn near a gas station on every corner and they pretty much all sold tires . You would pull and they'ld jack up the car , dismount the tire on a old manual machine or maybe just bar it off and on and then bubble balance it. Then we would take off down the road at legal speeds much higher then todays legal limit . for extreme example Iowa had no speed limit , later switched to 70 mph.. Do you guys think that all these tires were out of round and everybody just puy up with it ? It was a whole different world back then and you guys just don;t get it !

 

I have ALWAYS run tubeless with radials, are Coker radials different or something?

 

Why should any new tire need to be shaved? Has any one seen the prices of new tires these days, I think they all have gold mixed into the rubber? Or could the gold be in the steel? Hmmm? A new tire should be made perfectly round as all tires need to be round to go 65 mpr & higher. Any company making tires today had better make quality tires or other tire company's will take all there accounts/buisnes from them. Out around tires sounds like bad buisness.

 

I am curious, I here a few (not many) reply's stating that they have used Coker's on many cars with no problems. But I am curious if most of these few ever drive 65? Some vintage car owners love there cars so much that they baby them, even on the freeway they never get them up over 55. Some car owners don't drive the freeways at all, they would rather drive the back roads at 45 or less. Afraid if rock chips I guess?

So "please state that you drive your rigs at normal or excessive HWY speeds if you plan on praising the tires" It does make a difference.

 

There's a lot of finger pointing going on here. A lot of it is pointing at Coker. The issue here is the fact that bias ply tires have and alway had a greater potential to be out of round then modern radial tires. This is not unique to Coker. I ran bias plies on all my cars (my "A" coupe, my '40, '49) back in the day and yes they did a lot of strange things like thumping, pulling one way or another, developing flatspots and, ply separation and were more subject to blowouts. Most of the tires were good but a few were bad. We took it for granted back then because it was the best we had.

Fast forward to today and suddenly we are looking at the same 50 year old problems on the same 50 year old tire designs. You want the look of "classic" tires on your hot rod then why would you expect anything different. You expect today's technology to solve 50 year old problems on 50 year old designs, good luck. It's like expecting a early '30's top shifter to suddenly growing helical first gears.

This comment says alot to me.... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

It says he doesn't understand what the problem people are describing and detailing actually is. Try and run some 450 16 tires and come back and join the discussion. The characteristics of bias ply tires are not what people are having a problem with.

 

I have run them, from 4.50-16 to 36x12.50-15. The issue here is out-of-round tires, sold and shipped that way, from the manufacturer. Not once have we had a shaved round set still have issues. Some manufacturers don't seem to have this problem, on any size they sell. Others, not so much. They can be made round, as proven by others. Why aren't they all?

 

see post # 72:d

 

Yes, the problem is "my tires were terrible until I did this ...." not "no matter what I did . my tires never ran right". So the issue for me is,why aren't these tires straightened out before they are sold and shipped?

 

What about the 500 grooved front runners?

 

Never had good luck with those.

It does not help that they say this on the sidewall:

 

Funny that before being on the Hamb I never heard of tire truing machine, I don't know of a shop or anybody here in France that even know of such a machine. Then again Radials became factory equipment I think in 54 or 56, my 58 Renault came with Michelin X unfortunatly Michelin stopped making the size I need and all WWW about 10 years ago, leaving me with only 2 choices: ugly ass square side radials or going bias. If any bias needs to be shaved and no machine exists over here, my choice will be real easy.
On a side note I worked on a 36 Daimler lately that got restored about 5 years ago, it had Coker brand 18" blackwall tires on it, all of them were craked on their sides, looked like a cat had sharpened it's claws all over, it's a car that gets barely driven 100miles a year...

 

You know someone from Coker HAS to be aware of this discussion, and the other ones. Why no response-I am very surprised that these issues does not concern Corkie. This site is viewed worldwide and should be considered a great source of positive and negative input on his products. Corkie where are you?

 

Just wondering,do these problems exist only with the 450/500/16's,or is it with all sizes?

 

I have seen it on those, and on the reproduction Firestones in 5.60-16, 6.70-15, and a few others I can't recall right now.

 

The biker guys swear by this stuff for ballancing.
http://www.ride-on.com/

Harley maybe, not the 185 mph super bikes.
They come with round tires and are smoth as glass at 185.
Jap made of course.

 

I've used Dynabeads with good results. The took the shake out of the 36x12.50-15 bias-plies, when nothing else could. They are in everything I own, except for the wheelbarrow.

 

All I can say about bias ply tires and making them round got me in a peck of trouble with my local police when I was 17

But dam that 68 Charger sure would boil the shit right out of them, right down to needing another set!

them blue and red lights flashing coming thru the smoke sure was pretty