Technical Tires & the availability of what use to be common sizes

I got my wheels from Summit yesterday afternoon and loaded them up and headed to my old friends wheel & tire shop out in the country and thought I would be in and out in record time.

Thinking was my first mistake, they were quiet busy so I sat down and talked to my old friend and told him what I was looking for and he tapped away at his key board and said I can get it but I don't have it in stock, so I ask about another size combination and he said he had it but they were from two different manufacturers, he went on to say there are certain sizes that are just not popular as they once were, he doesn't stock but a very few 13 & 14 inch tires and just a few different series in 15 ".

He went on to say he had a lot of 70 series tires but 75 & 78's just wasn't requested and the guys coming in wanting wheels wanted those stupid huge wheels and rubber band tires.

I ended buying some 15" 205 /75 & 15" 225/ 75's but had to settle for whitewalls but mount them black wall out, he did sell them to me at black-wall price.

While waiting for them to be mounted he confined in me that in the last few years that the old style or traditional aftermarket wheel business is dead, he said the majority of his business is 4x4's, tuners, goofy jacked up cars with huge wheels.

I remember 30 to 40 years ago Ed's was the place to go if you had a hot rod and wanted aftermarket wheels, he use to carry Americans,Cragers,Keystone, Halibrand wheels and a few off brands.

Is this just in my area or is the availability of tires in different series shrinking? HRP

 

Yup!
13” and 14” are almost extinct
15” in certain sizes are getting hard to find also

Thank the manufacturers for that where 17” and up are basically standard sizes now
And the “ cool kids” like the stupid 24” and bigger with O rings as tires

 

Apparently, 14's are pretty expensive now 'cause nobody makes 14" wheels anymore. I have 14's on the front of the roadster and bought some basic 205/60's at Les Scwab a couple of years ago for like $50 each. I hear now they're four times that much!

 

My daily uses brand name 195/75/14's. $35 each after rebate, with free shipping to my door, from Discount Tire Direct. Last set arrived in 2 days.

It's nice to be able to shop local, but DTD carries plenty of the "no longer popular" sizes, priced right, and quick to ship.

 

It's getting like that all over.... In an era when even shitboxes come with 16" wheels, finding smaller rim sizes is getting harder. The brand/size selection has definitely narrowed, enough that I'm contemplating 16" wheels at my next purchase. The bigger sizes (17" and up) just don't look right on our cars IMO unless you're going for 'street rod'.

 

Yup, try and find a 225/75R/14 anymore. The car in my avatar has 215/70R/14 on the front and 225/70R/15 on the rear. They're getting hard to find.

 

- even finding 15" old style steel wheels, Torque Thrusts, etc on sites like craigslist they are getting scarce - not too long ago I could make some side money buying & selling used wheels - not now

 

For the big/little hiboy crowd; the music died when B.F. Goodrich stopped making those large diameter light truck tires, the ones with the less aggresive passenger car type tread.
Hoosier finally came out with some then Coker started repopping the Firestone dirt trackers.

 

I had the B.F. Goodrich tires on the back of my roadster, they really looked right on a 60's style roadster. HRP

 

HRP, may I ask what brand you bought and WW width?

Thanks
Ben

 

It's supply and demand, demand is lower on anything less than 16" wheels, so they make less of them and stop making the really slow selling sizes. I've always ran raised white letter tires, they're getting harder to find now, too, if they are even offered in the size you want. I've never been a fan of whitewalls, look too much like an old man's tire to me, so I guess I'll start running blackwalls on everything.

And I second XXL__, Discount Tire Direct is a great place to buy from. They run specials all the time, and free shipping a lot, too. Only down side is you have to find somebody to mount them, or do like I do, do it yourself.

 

BF Goodrich Sport Truck TA radials need to make a come back. At least every seven years like locust so we can Re Up.
They could run an ad in hot rod magazine and roust up pre orders.

 

Yup, just went thru this with my old Ford 15" wheels.........and the beat goes on!

 

These days I already know to go in and say order me up some...............because that's just how it is now.

 

For quite some time after those were discontinued some guy was selling them, he must of had a pretty good stock of them, almost like he had BFG connections and started buying them up early on, seems they were like $300 each.
If Coker (or whoever) could duplicate the original quality I'm sure they would be quite popular.

 

I'm surprised you're surprised.

 

HRP and others "surprised" about this,
I hate to break it to you, but this is nothing new, specific to "your area" or even limited to tires.
One used to be able to go to a new car dealership and buy one with a thing called carburetor, or with real leather interior.
Neither feature has been available for decades.
Come to think of it, one could probably make a long list of "used to be" common features no longer available for or on cars.

 

P.S. (Apologies for OT content) Little over a year ago I bought what is or was likely one of the last available "new" ('16 model) full size pick-up trucks with a certain (personal preference) bed/body/chassis combination, which up until 10-15 years ago was commonly offered by all American manufacturers. 8 years ago available only from 2. Last year from 1 and I'm guessing '18 or '19 and beyond from none.

 

It still is, or could be, if Ed embraced the changes in current tastes of the 'aftermarket wheel business'. The "old style/traditional aftermarket wheel business" replaced whatever was popular before that....and so it goes. I am not unsympathetic to ED, I'd feel the same way if I were in his business. I can't imagine selling the current crop of aftermarket 'Big Wheels' and fitting them to the atrocious cars they are are mounted on. Yuck! Someone looking to buy a buggy whip still can...just more difficult to find and the selection isn't great. Don't blame the messenger for the message.

 

When I needed a set of 13" whitewalls this spring not a single chain name brand or even a local specialty tire and wheel shop had them. The specialty shop even told me that just because walmart advertised them they really would have them.

Walmart did have them at something like 55.00 each.

 

Lots of these old sizes available at your local junkyard, and be sure to check out our latest installment of the "Aged Tire" argument thread.

 

Perfect for museums, trailer-queens and other "show only" cars.

 

Try finding 6.00 x 12 tires nowadays.

 

I read somewhere, may have been on the HAMB, that Coker had the molds and were going to do just that. Been a while though, haven't seen anything else on it....

 

A handy chart; https://tiresize.com/chart/

 

Try tireseasy.com. I just bought 2 195/75/14 with 1" whitewall from them. Had them in 2 days, and cost me $102.00 delivered to my door.

 

HRP, you forgot tell us what kind of wheels or more specifically where were they made ?
I hope the answer is not disappointing.

 

OUCH ! Easy on us poor streetrodders. LOL. I feel just as you do about those fucking rubber band "o" rings that some run on their modern rides with very deep back spacing that looked like a skate board. I run 15" steelies on my Deuce highboy and am thinking about 16" steelies for the rear to keep the tall profile, maybe for the front, too.

 

I deal with a buddy who runs a Discount Tire store in San Antonio. I see these 18" to 22" shit hanging on the walls where the stuff we rodders desire used to be. And, I really don't want button mud grip, 10-ply farm truck tires on the rear in order to get the height I want.