Technical The old Bias-ply verses radial tire debate again, with a twist.

Dave 29,

Since I've built my 32 roadster and 32 coupe with Firestone bias ply tires and I've been trying to improve the control at higher speeds. The coupe can run very fast and well but at 65 it can wobble but then smooth above that. I'm in Ohio too and our roads for the most part are pathetic! With all the tax dollars collected and money misspent leaves the roads in worse shape going back many decades. Its shameful but the American people are asleep!!

Anyway I still want to enjoy my hot rods so I asked Gary at Corn Husker Rod and Custom who built my roadster and he recommended the So. Cal Speed Shop front stabilizer. I installed one on both cars and highly recommend it! It wont eliminate all the wobble but it settles it down so much quicker. I repainted them flat black and installed them in the center area and they are barley noticeable.

Now my questions;

How about running these bias ply front tires tubeless? They say tubeless on them and my rims are new? Some claim the tubes cause some of the problems.

What about the Coker Excelsior Stahl Sport Radials?

What about the balancing beads insteadd of wheel weights?

32 Spitfire
High Noon Speed Shop
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/street-rodder-features-my-32-coupe.945829/#post-10640018

 

If a hot rod as described only weighs 1500 pounds, it has a very unfavorable sprung to unsprung weight ratio.
The axles, brakes, wheels, tires and a portion of other components are unsprung weight. When they get thrown upward by a bump, the sprung portion (maybe 1100 lbs or so) of your 1500 pounds have a harder time resisting upward force. The greater the sprung weight in proportion to unsprung, the more the springs absorb the suspensions movement instead of it being transferred to the ch***is/body.

As for bias vs radial tires, one only need compare them on a well engineered ch***is to see the remarkable difference in favor of radials. All these anecdotal accounts of what worked or didn't work are meaningless as a measure of tire type. From what is readily observable from vehicles displayed at events and in photos here on the HAMB, it is quite obvious that suspension/steering geometry principles are routinely disregarded. Scrub radius being one of the more commonly found issues. Some of that is through ignorance of the geometry involved, but many times, including comments in posts above, style is chosen over 'correct'.

My main point being, if you use as a 'test specimen' a car not properly setup in the first place, either sprung/unsprung ratio and/or suspension geometry issues, no amount of tire type switching is going to save the day.

Ray

 

Little more info on my set up. 112 inch WB results in large turning radius. When turning left or right from a stop, you start to turn the wheel before you think about it. Front spring is 4 leaf reverse eye with Monroe (?) AM 10020 2X tube shocks. No panhard bar. Purchased one but not convinced I need it. Rear set up Standard eye rear spring, 7 leafs with Speedway SM600 tube shocks. I removed 3 leafs from original set up.When I stated front end darts, I meant only when going crown & heavy truck channels in the road, otherwise it steers & handles well.
Wife doesn't care to ride in it. Too loud, too hot, smelly, uncomfortable. But as all wife's can be, she changes her mind and states she wants to drive it.

 

K Tony!! I was concerned! ( You definitely have a eye for stance!!) Pete

 

what size tire and wheels are you running?...looks good

 

Are we supposed to be celebrating a holiday in stead of working on this problem? Where's my time and a half? Then again talking hot rods is a holiday. I say time to just start building another one while pondering these handling whoas a new build will always distract you from existing troubles.

 

Dave29.
A little more from my perspective.
Sounds like your springs are "in the ballpark".
This after all is really just Vodo!
As Hnstray points out, the car is light
compaired to the unsprung weight, but IMHO,
what is lost here is the fundamental fact that you can't
ever really make an old Ford handle "modern"
If you need "modern," buy it.
It really doesn't pay to try to make an 80 year old
rig feel smooth and nice riding.
The whole reason for all this nostalgia Hot Rod stuff
is to feel like it's the 40's or '50's when driving.
I'm from Upstate NY and the back roads here are as bad or
worse than yours! The whole point of this stuff we do is
to feel like what it was back then.
The roads were even ****pier, there was no interstate
to speak of, and you did most driving at 50 MPH.
I've had 5 different sets of wheels and tires on the same car.
Yes it bump steers, wanders and sometimes leaves the road
entirely! That is where the fun really is!
Driving on the edge really has nothing to do with speed
necessarily. Having fun at the edge of your car's
capability is where it's really at.
In most cases I'd rather drive my '31 Ford at 50 mph on a back road,
than the 160 MPH '61 Aston Martin with the 327 Vette engine
that I had to go over 100 MPH on the interstate just to
keep from falling asleep driving.
I think I should go for a drive!
Just my $.02

 

My wife scares the bejesus out of me. Merging, SWEET JESUS! At least she has backed off of the tailgating, rear-ended someone bad enough to write off her car last year...
The trip with your son sounds like a once in a lifetime experience, that's so cool.

 

My wife keeps backing into stuff. Apparently she thinks everyone should get out of the way when she's in reverse, including parked cars, and the house. Yep, she backed into the house, corner wall.

 

Speed wise I've driven a lot faster on bias tires than I have ever driven on radials when I sit back and think about it for a few minutes. 122 top end on my 69 Cutl*** with Uniroyal tiger paws in 1969. Higher than that in my 55 Buick with tires that would scare me now before I got drafted.
Maybe the Coker bias tires just don't handle like the old BFG, Uniroyal, Firestone or other brands of bias tires did back then but I road a lot of fast miles on bias tires and never had an issue or thought I had an issue. No they don't handle like new performance radials do but the radials out of the 70's didn't handle like the new ones do either.

That said, there isn't a rule in the books that says you can't have two sets of tires mounted up at the same time and throw a set of radials on it for the daily or around town driving and keep the bias tires for special occasions that deem you run the bias tires.

 

Tony
I like the way you think! We all know the experience we feel when driving our hot rods. There is NO comparison between modern transportation, that you give up most of your senses, to a hot rod. The best time I have in my roadster is driving it at dawn, stars still out and the sun just cracking the horizon. When I feel down, nothing beats getting in my roadster and taking it for a drive . It makes me alive. I sometimes forget what hotrodding is all about. You guys are the best.

 

Wish I had a Trunk Monkey...I think too that maybe the OP's suspension is a tad stiff....But a smooth cruse over a 2 incher is asking a lot..Still wish I had a Trunk Monkey...

 

God, once my wife backed into a big blue smithright dumpster!
I always used to give her **** for putting her purse on top of the emergency brake, she just could not grasp why this was a problem.
One time(she says this shouldn't count because she was pregnant, and all hormonal) we were parking behind this restaurant with a parking lot that sloped towards the back of the building. Car full of people, I am in the back seat. For some unknowable reason, she shut the car off in neutral instead of park and got out of the car! Its slowly rolling towards the back of the building (only a couple feet away) Our friends 70 yr old mom is in the front seat, freaking out in Vietnamese, and I am swearing a blue streak, FRANTICALLY trying to lift her purse out of the way and lunging between the seats to pull the emergency brake! I just got the purse out of the way and was pulling the lever as we hit the building. Never a dull moment. Oh, yea, uh radials.

 

560-15 front and 820-15 back. Pete

 

thanx for the tire size...what about the wheel size?

 

Brain fart!!15x 5- 2.75 BS, front and 15x 7- 3.75 BS, back.Pete

 

thanks!

 

I think I might solved his handling demons Larry... I bet he runs fenders! Or lied to save face. Fix... Paint'r black!

 

Well I,m lost!! Pete

 

It's just a little HAMB humor. @3wLarry is a huge(if not the hugest)proponent of true Traditional Hot Rods. Apparently those only require a perfect wheel and tire size combo, killer stance, intimidating chop, black paint, and absolutely No Fenders! The rest is cake. I as well follow this mantra.

 

I like Larry's, Shine's mantra too.......except for paint!!! HaHa!

 

Hnstray - excellent tutorial. It points out the need to study suspension and steering systems, but study is not a popular concept in this day and age! If you are running a transverse drag link (Vega steering box, or something similar) a panhard rod is mandatory. Longitudinal drag links track well without the panhard rod.
As for tread separation, this is a common problem on belted radials. The belts are bias plied, the tire casing is radial plied. Once a "radial" has been mounted and run, the two plies take on an orientation that should not be reversed: ie never run in the opposite direction. Buying a used radial is not good policy even if the tread depth looks good. You have no idea of its history.
Also, never expect a light weight car to handle like a heavier car.
Nuff said.

 

Oh!! Did I mention I'm slow too!! Pete

 

Quote"

No panhard bar. Purchased one but not convinced I need it.

When I stated front end darts, I meant only when going crown & heavy truck channels in the road, otherwise it steers & handles well.
"Quote


Your front leaf is probably compressing side to side with load ... This is defiantly a problem with no panhard if you have cross steer .... Especially with only 4 leafs

Light cars however no matter what tires will be thrown around in truck ruts

 

I still would like to stress that if your car when driving or compressing the springs especially the front when working through its travel... If the shackles are running too close vertical or have to much slop, can let the ch***is(which is sprung m*** and makes up the bulk of your car's weight is most effected by inertia) shift around under your main m***. The bulk of the car wants to go forward and since that is the way it is already going. However the two are tied together after all and if the un-sprung m*** which is lighter and more easily altered in it's trajectory begins to get pushed and pulled by the road... It will eventually pull the ch***is in a similar fashion. This actually happens much faster than I can explain it(if I can even do that). But if there is a way to hold the to sprung and un-sprung m***es tighter together... I.E. no slop or side to side shifting, the entire m***/body as a whole will move in a way that is less effected by road inconsistencies.
But probably your spring set up is to soft and your shocks have too much compression or too fast of rebound, that's a whole nother convoluted discussion that I can't explain well either.[emoji41]

 

I don't know about this, I think maybe Larry is about to surprise you....

 

I just put radials on the 40 for the trip to Joplin and it is amzing how much better this car drives with radials. I haad a 32 roadster with a similar set up and drove it at 70-80 mph all the time and the car drove great!

 

Yeah I know, I got wind somewhere of the stinky garbage he's up to, the nerve of this guy and to think I look up to him. You just can't expect your Heroes to always perfect. I suppose I could start name dropping falcongeorge all over the place now I think he's equally cool too.[emoji6]

 

You know I have a T coupester with cycle fenders in the works, right?

 

Yeah, but I don't have a problem with that. I have been a equally p***ionate motorcycle builder/rider/racer my whole life so I'm use to those.
Hell, I'm patiently waiting!