Does anybody have any experience with port a walls lately? I am shopping for 670x15 or 205/75R-15s for my shoebox. White walls a SO much more expensive than blackwalls that i cant believe it, but i am thinking of going the "port a wall "route. My recollection as a kid seeing these, is that they seemed to pull away from the sidewall and looked ratty at some point in their life. Maybe the new ones are made of better material.
If you don't mind the snickers, pointing at your car and the laughing, then run them. There is a chopped/channel RR here in town nd I have NEVER walked past his car and not seen someone pointing down at the tires.
I had radials on my 57 Pontiac and never had any trouble with them. Did they look as good as regular White Walls ? No, but it was cheap and they looked ok. Never had any problems with them at all.
I'll second that! I ran a set on my coupe for 1 season while trying to come up with the $ for a set of real whitewalls. By the end of the season, I had the image of the raised letter portion of the tire burned into the port-o-wall(picture raised brownletter whitewalls) It also wore a deep grove in the sidewall and wore away most of the sidewall lettering on an almost new set of tires.
Those must be the ones you gave to me the first time I ever met you. I still tell people what a great guy you are for giving me those, now I know the truth.
i've got radials and they are fine. find the right tires and you won't have them covering the letters and have them burned in like the other guy. i have cooper cobras with the white letters in the inside and i'm runnin 1.75 wide ports. they work fine, just make sure you have them sealed in all the way or they'll leak. i've heard the 3" ones will tear/fly off easier. i'm runnin 225/60 in the front and the letters are on the outside edge so you should be fine. just measure and see if the letters are at least two inches from the rim of the wheel and you'll be fine.
Actually it was the "bigs" in the back that I had the most trouble with. I think those came from you didn't they? I think they just weren't made to go 80 mph down 35 for about 4 hours w/o slowing down during a trip to Des Moines. When are you going to the GSTA show???
I had good luck on the boat trailer tires... bad luck on the Eldorado... Port-a-walls / painted / grinding examples all here http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129558&page=4&highlight=white+walls and a grinding video here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPsZATp4I7E
There are a lot of threads about this already. I'll say what I keep saying on all of them: those of you who think your portowalls look okay have never seen what your car looks like going down the road! The wind makes them flap out from the tire which 1) looks really really stupid and 2) makes other drivers think your tire is coming apart. This causes them to drive badly around your car because they think you're going to crash into them or because they are trying to be helpful by frantically waving you down while honking and pointing at your wheels. There was a guy at the HAMB Drags last year or the year before who had them on his car and they were flapping out away from his tires most of the way down the track, every single time. Portowalls only look "okay" from a distance, if your car is parked and if the viewer is slightly drunk. Don't do it.
They might not flutter around as much, but I'd bet they still float out from the tire a bit at highway speed? I forgot they even make the narrower ones. They do look much better than the wide ones.
Sometimes a problem getting tubeless tires to seal. I put them on the spare of my 56 vicky, pain to get them even all the way around. Didnt look right so took it off spare and put on E Bay
Ive run the wide ones on my Valiant for a few years...and replaced a few too.. They are on radials and the only problem Ive had is they dont seem to stand up to long highway drives...I drove 5500 miles on a roadtrip to see a couple of interstate car shows and the portawalls seemed to fail once the tyres got really hot...could be a coincidence but seemed a bit suss on two trips in a row... Around town they are fine for me,dont flap and look ok from a distance....then again...so does my Safari!!!!
No way man. I lost 2 withing 2 miles on the front end. They suck and they make a lot of noise. If you want cheap whites, do a search on how to grind off the black on the thin white stripe tires. I've never done this, but the pictures of the final product looks pretty good. Save your $$ for the real deal.
Don't complain about the whitewall tyre price, they are about 3 times the US price down here! And yes, the porta walls look OK in a photo, but they chew into radial sidewalls, flap like crap and if you get too close to the curb will rip or tear out. Iv'e used the whitewall tyre paint with limited success,
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