Nope you can still get a Kelly springfield bias bly big truck tire. A heck of a lot of lowboy tires are bias ply also. I know a guy who just bought sone 750 x 20 bias ply tires to put on his lowboy. a lowboy loaded heavy if you turn sharp with radials will drag the sidewalls and bruse them.
mE Me,too! I last drove my '73 C30 in 1984, the put it on blocks while I went to school. then moved to far away to brin git along and gave it to a friend.
Federal regulations permit recap steers except on busses, I posted a link to the regs back near the beginning of this thread if you’d like to see for yourself. That said, back when I was a fleet maintenance director we made the decision to quit running recaps because it didn’t make sense financially for our operation.
I honestly cant answer your post ... I think of slicks as high dollar wrinkle wall tires. The whole sidewall and belt construction is different. I doubt these are retreaded. Bandag is called a cold cap, it makes the tread rubber at a higher temp and pressure, then you apply the new tread to the casing. It is cured at 210 degrees just a thin layer of raw rubber to apply tread to casing. I can picture Tires being retreaded to look like slicks. Bandag offers buildup which is a smooth rubber for forklifts in a warehouse. And used for other things. I could take a set of bias ply tires and apply the smooth rubber and make them look like slicks. The rubber would be to stiff and fight the old tire casings. They would fail eventually. Hot caps is a process where tire casings are buffed, then raw rubber applied to the casing and then put in a mold to cure the tread. And cured at 260 degrees. This actually is to hot for tire casings, it destroys the original rubber and to many reasons to cause a failure. You have to remember, retreading tires is a hot and dirty work. The typical retreader had a bottle of booze stashed at their work station. You use a hoist or crane to drop the casing in the clam shell mold. If it is not exactly centered, you will have issues balancing it. If you touch the prepared surface before applying the raw rubber, the oils from your skin will cause the rubber to not adhere and fail. These tires are picked up and man handled all the time to get from one station to the next. The shops are hot and dirty, doors are open to allow a breeze, dirt is flying. I am not saying that they did not retread slicks. Just something we did and it was stupid, we learned and we moved on. For semi trucks and off road vehicles, we need retreads. I sure would not want one on a Hot Rod going 100 mph down the track. Hotrodprimer, your original photo is not that bad. When they put it in the clam shell mold, what you see loose is the excess rubber that oozed past the prepared surfaces. When they come out of the mold, there is a process of spinning the tire and a sharp knife to remove the loose rubber. Depending on the retreader, the time of day, how big his booze bottle was and how much is left ... it simply did not get cleaned as it should have. You can just clean the loose stuff off. Is the cracking on the sidewalls that you have to watch, I did not really see any, but the rubber still gets old. Raise your hands if you want a retread on a hot rod going 100 mph down the track
Yep I would used Marsh racing recapps on the rear on the track at 100 MPH. At high speed not much weight is on the tires there is a lot of lift. I bet less stress on a set of recap slicks at 100 MPH that in my 1/2 ton 66 GMC carrying a heavy load thru the Ozark Foothills. Its heavy loads when hard cornering that stresses a tire. The tread grips the road and the casing is gripping the rim. theres a lot of force trying to pull the tread from the road surface or from the casing. The picture is my GMC after arriving home with a M farmall on the 20 ft tilt top. The trailer has 16 inch real old bias ply recaps on split rims. the tractor weight is 6000 pounds and the trailer bed is all steel with a steel floor. I tried radials on the trailer and had constant tire failure. Bought those old 16 inch tires and rims at a auction. installed them and no more tire trouble
Ok I have run a bandang retread as a steer tire. I bought a 59 GMC bob truck the wheels where 6 lug just like my 66 ford. and for a time is ran a US Royal tire that had a bandang retread. on the front. 40 some years later its now on the inside rear of the 66.notice the separation line where the retreader attached the section together. The next are recap mud grip that I bought from Debbies Daddy when we where dating. We have been married 46 years The next picture is of a old cotton cord recapped casing. Its on the single front wheel of a 350 farmall row crop tractor. I bet it older than I am. The last pictures are of radial recaps. never been mounted on anything since they where capped. Its similar to the Bandag recap? Dunlop 750x16 tire size. they are really stiff and heavy sidewalls. cant mount them on a tubeless wheel. I need to find radial tubes and flaps to use them on split rims. Any road I think if recaps where so terrible I wouldn't have been satisfied with using them for more than 5 decades. and I have been disappointed several times
Before M&H started making slicks, all I ever saw were caps. Bruce's tires in San Leandro, across the bay from here. made the slicks everyone used. You see a picture of some guy smoking the hides for the full quarter in 1961. Bet he's running Bruce recap Slicks.
I enjoyed the video. certainly not the dirty dusty smelly environment and the besotted worker a earlier poster described.
Bandag is pretty much the standard that all others want to copy. My post above, back in the 50's - 80's it was a real grab bag of who was working and retreading your tires. I respect those that ran retreads, I just would not want to do it on a car or pickup today. Back then, you only got 20k miles on a set of tires, you could retread the casings and get another 20k miles. Todays truck tires, you are getting over 100k miles from them, the casings are built to be retreaded and you getting close to or over, 1/2 million miles from them after retreaded 3 or more times. While car tires are now getting 60k + miles on them, they are not designed to be retreaded and get another 100k on them. Retread tires is something we did in the past. I did a lot of things in the past, that would not be acceptable today.
Yet they still retread and sell tires everyday. I would think that in this day and age, the Federal Government would have outlawed them completely, in all forms and all applications, if they were that dangerous. JMO
I vaguely remember that, while the Army uses lots of re-caps, on the Deuce and 1/2 and the 5-ton trucks they didn't allow them on the front axle. Maybe because those trucks are often used as buses now that I think about it.
I've toured 4 different working cap shops, 2 of them were BANDAG. They all were fairly tidy for the type of work that was going on, but none of them looked like the shop in the video. It's hot, dirty, smelly work.
The federal Government doesn't seem very much in the mood to regulate very much these days. Too busy not listening to each other. Could be worse, we might have Brexit.
Gather round you young guys..Back in the "good old days" recaps were the only way slicks were made.. BRUCE <CASLER>& INGLEWOOD was only thing available..Inglewood was the biggest seller. Until some guy named Rifchin developed one called M & H...but it wasnt a recap...I think now-a-day I think Goodyear has overtaked M & H...
there are lots of grain farmers in the Ark delta. and they only use their trucks for a few weeks during the harvest. it makes a lot of finiancial sense for them to used the lowest cost option tires . many use regrooved or recap tires. and you don't see any uptick in tire disasters during the harvest season.
Hello, We always bought new tires from a tire company showroom or our local parts store. They were usually new Firestones or Goodyear Tires. Those were the biggest names and most cars from the factory came with one or the other brand. New tires were the thing to have on all cars. The local truck shops always carried their “recap” tires. We usually see the remnants from those recapped tires at various places on the freeway or highways. Our high school group, as economical as possible, always purchased new tires, not recaps. (parent rules) Although the cost of recap tires were almost ½ the cost of new. By the time 1965 rolled around, the industry had changed technology and the some of the popular tires were actually recaps. I wanted wide tires for my 1965 El Camino and the only place with good ones was Inglewood Tire Co. in Inglewood, CA. The local tire company stores had recap tires that looked new, but they did not have wide tires. Inglewood had come out with their fancy Redline wide tires called “Posatraction” tires. I purchased a set, but not before the dealer said to bring in my old/new Firestone tires. When asked why, the answer was they were going to use my fairly new carcasses for recap, base tires. The application of recapping tires was so much better than the old days, so the new Inglewood Posatraction Red Line Tires fit the bill for our 65 El Camino. Jnaki No more getting stuck in soft sand near the beach or the deep desert dirt in the Mojave area. It just rolled over the soft stuff. On the streets, the wide tires made the El Camino handle like a sports car. That was a plus. But, when it rained or there was a slight mist, several things happened. In the mist, the brakes had to be gingerly tapped as a panic pedal would make the wide tires just float around and skid. The rainy weather? The term hydroplaning was made for this wide tire. I had to be extra cautious in driving the El Camino in the rain. The car just lifted on the surface of the water on the road and floated down to street. So, I had to immediately let off the gas and normal control came back. My wife did not like driving the El Camino in the rain, but, learned how to handle the slippery tires for safe driving. I got stuck driving her 1962 Corvair in the rain. No slipping and sliding in the rain for that Corvair. It took corners quite well and handled itself in those conditions. It was the "pouring water" coming in the lower vents that would flood the interior in deep puddles. That is another sad GM story and kind of a cool car.
I saw the Les Shockly jet powered Shock Wave Peterbilt run at a drag strip one night. Supposed to run over 200 mph with all three jets going. A fellow trucker and I were giving it a look over in the pits, and he pointed the tires out to me....every one of them were Michelins, recapped into slicks! Not the tread buffed off, the cap was slick as a baby's butt. We're talking in all positions, steers and rears. No, they were't power driven, but they did have to stay together at 200 mph, even if just a 1/4 mile at a time. They trusted them more than I did.
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