Hot Rods HIBOYS -TALL & SKINNY or FAT and WIDE TIRES

Cheese it guys, here come the cops!

 

I like the idea of changing up from an earlier to a later style and back when the mood strikes. Say, '40s versus '50s and early '60s.
I posted my skinny Ford wheels.
I got these 700-15 chromies for a later look.
But not too late.

 

And I ain't the cops.
Hall monitor, maybe.
Safety boy.

Yeah, that's it.
Officer Moriarity and his faithful companion Safety Boy.

 

I prefer something in the middle

 

WOW, you guys can change the look in 15 to 20 minutes? slight exaggeration or you guys tire changers for NASCAR teems?

I had a set of steelies on my orange '32 roadster but never got the tire height that looked right to me so I bought a set of saltflat wheels and had planed to swap them out every now and then but I ended up selling them to another Hamber. HRP

 

Can you imagine how long it would take to get photos posted on the HAMB if we were limited to using cameras that were pre-66.

 

I think both widths look good.......but to me they make different statements about the car and its owner.

It comes down to whether someone believes that a certain look is more important than appreciating the mechanical purity of making things not only work together but provide performance as well.

The tire of choice should be able to harness the power made available by the engine and the gears and traction devices in the drivetrain. If someone builds a lower powered vehicle and only needs a narrow tire to provide traction, there really isn't a need for wide tires. It also fits with period cars that were driven in the 30s and 40s when few cars needed or could use a larger tire.

By the time the fifties rolled in, more OHVs began to appear and people began looking for larger tires. I remember the "Big O" tire stores and their recap tires..........."any size $9.99". Lot of guys including me went for those tires on the back of our low budget cars.

Continue into the early 60s and the trend from flatheads to even larger OHV engines. I had a 58 Cad 365 w/2x4s in a 33 Ford sedan. Muscle cars came on the scene and it was getting tougher to outrun stock factory cars much less the modified ones. Local car dealer hosted a small show to introduce the Hemi (68?)as one of the replacement engines for the 273 V8 64 Barracuda. Clearly the path that any hot rodder had to follow was to incorporate engines capable of making more power and adding tires that were large enough to (hopefully) handle that power.

While many prefer to reside in the confines of tradition, you actually have to look at the front of the car to determine what should be on the rear of the car. Skinny tires on the rear of a roadster with a blown hemi in the engine compartment look just as "out of place" as monster wide tires on the back of an inline 4 or flathead with a couple of 2 barrel carbs.

If my build of a 500 Cadillac with an 8-71 Blower and a manual transmission gets to fruition.......it would look rediculous with skinny tires out back.

A Chevy V8 and some original 50s V8s could go either way depending on how the engine is built. If someone actually wants to project performance as one of the criteria in their build, then I think (IMHO) they should use a wider tire. If nostalgia is their top priority, then a lower performance engine and narrower tires looks fine.

So to sum up, both can look good when used to compliment the intent of the build.........

I think the last picture in post #29 by Ron Funkhouser is a perfect example.

 

This is what I was using 20 years ago. HRP

 

It really depends on the car!

 

Yeah, 1965 and 1969 photos of Steve Scott's Uncertain T

 

I was all for the tall, skinny look, until I watched this video and saw it looks like 48hp will over-power them.... strongly considering a second set of wheels/tires and/or just unloading the tall/skinnies all together. I'm not trying to build something with a million horsepower, but I also want some sort of reasonable performance out of a set of tires. So I guess it's like what you guys are saying, depends on the car and what you want out of it.

09:10-11:20 is the drag strip portion that I'm referring to.

 

Some where in between.

Lee

 

Either we're limiting ourselves to what was seen in 1965 and earlier or not.

Let me know.

 

As a matter of fact one of the publications featured an article where an engineer calculated that the fastest ET had been reached based on his use of tire width and rubber coeficient of friction.
He failed to imagine what would come.

 

I went with medium width tires with shoulder pads. Era correct? Do I really care?

 

Fortunately, the tires are not limited to what was available in 1965 here. Its unfortunate that the later 60s or early 70s wheels don't get the same freedom.

I come from a dirt track background Skinny tires just do not look right to me, and the local dirt track boys were running some pretty big tires on those old coupes they were racing there up to 66, so wider tires were available.

 

29" tall, 8" wide, tucked in proper on my 34

 

I wish some could grasp the fact that for the most part, the General Discussion side of the HAMB is somewhat more progressively minded, the problem for me is, the Traditional guys also use components that THEY feel is ok and I wouldn't nitpick them as I really don't have a clear definition of what a true "traditional" build is.
I don't have a problem with the HAMB's pre-66 mandate as far as (body) model year is concerned but for people to think that the stockpile of early components will last forever is somewhat presumptuous.

 

I'm somewhere in the middle, not too tall, not too short, not too wide, not too narrow. I don't have a hiboy but you get the gist...

 

After taking a little time to think about the question......
My answer is, "Yes!"

 

I still have one stashed away somewhere. At the time we were amazed at the technology

 

Tall and Skinny

wait, are we talking about tires?

 

in my opinion, on anything that isnt a 40s or later car it needs to be a little bit offset width wise. be it truck rims and tires in the rear and car rims and tires in the front, or any similar setup.

 

Are we taking wide on the rear only? I put the same size all the way around. I like to corner and the skinny's just didn't do it for me. But maybe I don't have enough on the rear cause it just blows those tires off!

 

Tall and Skinny for me

 

One bad motha!!!!!