BTW way I try not to cuss much, but that did need some emphasis! To each is own, it's a preference I guess. I've ran both but on an open fendered car there is no option for me.
When OK Tire was in Dallas,we all had our tires trued and balanced exactly like 34 roadster describes above... tires lasted many more miles,and rode so much smoother
I don't know what to think , truing them up ........ After all the trouble the tire manufacturer went through to sell you a set of "KNURLED" tires....... Flux
The Firestone store I worked in in Waco Tx had a 'truing" machine that got used to true up out of round ties. I think the term was "trued and balanced" as WBRW32 mentioned earlier. OK Rubber Welders recaps were big in this area and the OK tires stores did a lot of tire truing when I was a teenager and my friends were running caps. I think having the recaps trued and balanced cost almost as much as the recaps did in those days but they rode a lot better.
I'm just surprised how nice his toenail polish stayed through all of that shaving. I have had tires flat spot many times and come back round, but at the moment I have one (BFG radial) that went flat on a car for a month before I pulled the car cover off and realized it. I have now driven it about 100 miles and even done a couple of smokey burnouts and it's still got the flat spot. I guess some never recover. About 1/8"-3/16", enough to feel at about 50+
I guess my intent of this thread wasn't a shoulder for people to cry on.....tires are round to a specification. Today, our specifications are probably a little more stringent than the time at which some of these tire molds were made. And as some people have experienced, modern radials can have the same issue. Bottom line - we're all trying to cobble stuff together that was never engineered to work together....that's hot rodding....then we try to fine tune that creation into a manageable machine. This thread was showing a way to resolve some dynamic issues.
Hey Cory, what does the actual blade look like? When I first heard of shaving tires I imagined the cutter to be like a sickle blade type situation, but after watching the video, i'm thinking it is more like a meat cutting, or tile saw blade in a smooth edged disc format, rather than aggressively toothed. Thanks for the tech on this, very interesting!
We have to face facts, the kinds of cars we all love on this forum are not the most technologically advanced vehicles on the road. We are riding on 100 year old suspension technology, and we love the look of bias ply tires that have been outdated for 50 years..........but that is what we do and what we love about them. No question that radials are superior in most respects to bias plies, but they don't have the "look" most of us want, so we are willing to accept that fact and live with the disadvantages. People jump on Coker for not turning out a round tire, but they never were, even back in the day. All the major brands had flaws and it took the installer to correct them as much as he could. So shaving a bias ply in 2015 should not be so unusual. Don
It is a smooth blade. Basically a sharpened disk. There's a sharpening stone mounted directly below the blade on this machine, and it's actuated by a lever to easy sharpening too.
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