Tire question

I have a 31 model A...I wanted to stay traditional and got a set of Firestone Gumball Ply tires. The problem is the front gets crazy looseover over 50mph. Any thoughts on switching the fronts to a radial? Do you think this will help with the 50+ death wobble?

 

My guess is that the problem is somewhere other than the tires. Can you borrow some from a friend and run them top see if the problem goes away? I assume you have checked your suspension for any sloppy parts.

Charlie Stephens

 

I will try that.....I just had the wheels rebalanced and the front end realigned...but the wobble is still there

 

Did this wobble appear after you changed to bias-ply early tires, or is this your first trips out of the garage?
Did you put new kingpins and bushings in your spindles when you built the frontend?
Caster set at 5-8 degrees, tilt of the axle to the rear?
Toe-in at 1/4"-3/8"?
Steering box rebuilt or at least adjusted correctly by factory manual?

 

Two shackles or a dead perch on the axle? Panhard bar? How bout some pics of the front suspension.

 

Are you just wanting to change the fronts to radials and leave the back to bias ply? That is a bad idea.

Sounds like you've got something else wrong in the front end.

 

Until the last thirty years, all we had were bias ply tires... NASCAR didn't run radials 'till sometime in the '90's... It's prolly your front wheel/tire combo, but it ain't the bias plys that makin' your wheels wobble... Set the caster where it ought to be and toe it out just a gnat's ass...

 

There's a ton of info on this here...try doing a search under "deth wooble" & you'll be reading until the suns comes up. Mixing bias & radials is a bad idea..period. If your shimmy isn't too bad, a simple steering dampener will probably cure the symptoms, but not the underlying cause.

 

check to see if the tire is out of round. it happens alot on cars that sit.

 

Gyroscopic precession's a bitch. If everything's tight and right I'd look at caster.