Any body got a good trick to shave the side walls on tires ? Gettin the lettering off is what I mean Thanx
Here is a post I did on the Hamb a few months ago: My '64 Galaxie is built to look like a 60's stock car would look like. I am using modern Bf Goodrich radials for a nice ride, but the blackwall lettering does not look right, and it really bothered me. My solution was to sand the sidewalls smooth to get a nice un-cluttered sidewall. A little experimenting on an old tire led to this process shown here. You will need a dual action or "DA" sander, and a few discs of 80 grit paper. This process will not harm the tire in any way, as I have done it on several cars now with great results: Here is the tire with all the lettering visible: I leave the air in the tire as it it far easier than sanding on an un-inflated tire. If you have some really nice wheels, you may chose to mount them on some junk wheels just in case you slip with the sander and end up sanding your wheels. You really don't want to get right up next to the rim, so just be careful. You basically start sanding on the lettering, and let the sander do the work until the lettering is gone: This is the progress after about a minute: This is after a few more minutes. You want to sand down until the letters are gone and no more, though it is really hard to do any damage to the sidewall using the "DA". I go ahead and lightly sand all the way around the sidewall so it all has the same texture, which ends up nice and smooth: I removed all the raised lettering, but chose to keep the tire size, serial numbers and well as the D.O.T. markings, though you can remove it all for a really smooth look. The edge against the wheel needs to be gone over with some Scotchbrite to knock the glaze off and give a nice uniform appearance:
Iver heard of doing it with a grinder, there are some videos online you can search for that show you how. It is tuff to get them to look good though I hear. I just had these done last week and the tire show that did them has a machine that kinda looks like a bench grider. The guy that did it told me it took him 15 years to get good at it.YOu cant even tell these are done. Came out really nice.Only cost 100 bucks for the set to get it done but well worth it.
I did it about the same way as DriveEm. Used a die grinder (cut back the speed) and USED Rotoloc discs. Finished it off by block sanding by hand. It was a pain in the butt, but I like the finished look. Larry T
To make el cheapo wide whites, I use a 36 gr. disk on the 7" grinder, then follow that up with 80gr. on the DA, and finish with 120. Second the leaving the tire on the rim, aired up. Balance them after shaving. Light truck white lettered tires yield nice big whitewalls. Just cleaning up the goofy lettering, leave the grinder part out and use the DA.
Do like a lot of women drive the damn car down the curb for a couple miles. <!-- / message --> <!-- sig --> ____ That was just wrong,although just about an hour ago,I saw a women in an Expedition_that had two wide whites on the right side because of this.____________
da with 220 will take a while but will do it. 80 grit for most of the work and go to 180-220 to finish it.
Will this work with a raised white letter tire to make a blackwall? There are several tires on the market that are about what I want in size, both width and O.D.,and at a ecent price, but they have raised white letters, and those don't look right on what I'm building. Dave
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