Hot Rods 15” tires going away like the dodo bird

Perusing craigslist , looking at tires for sale and I am always looking at vintage wheel listings. Well it seems like 16” , 17” and 20” are becoming the new normal. Do you think that 15” are going the way of 14” tires or do you think they will always be around ? Thoughts?

 

15s are still popular with racers of all types of cars. So are rims to fit them.

 

Like you said with "racers" so that specialty market will be there..
yes 15's are going away not as many choices any more.
Even your cheap compacts are coming with 16's on them.

 

Yes I have noticed that . I have 16” on my or truck and heck, cars are way past that.

 

Way too many cars with 15" wheels still around. Plus huge numbers of custom wheel makers still selling 15" wheels. It may happen some day, but doubt it will happen anytime soon.

 

I can remember when finding wide 14” wheels, like 9”/10” were easy and plenty of G60’s and 50 series tires were all over the place and now 14” tires are getting harder to buy. Just getting a gut feeling that 15” will evolve the same way. Maybe not as 15’s work on disc brakes. I don’t know.

 

I bought a set of 225/70 R 15 yesterday, I had a lot of sizes to choose from, this is at a home town tire store.

I believe the 15" tires will bee available for many years to come, this place still stocks 14" wheels & tires. HRP

 

you just noticed this? It's been a trend for a long time, now.

 

Last year when I needed to replace the tires on my coupe the Toyo size (235/75/15 ) were no longer available for the rear. Moved on to Michelin..more than happy. Even BFG doesn’t list that size anymore,prolly bought 3 sets from them in the past.

 

Try tirerack.com also as said b/4 local tire stores. May just depend on size you need/want.

 

As long as people are happy with the shitty ride the O-ring tires provide, the tall tires are going to continue to fade away. Traditional hot rods and custom cars represent a very small segment of vehicles. Even some of them have adopted the O-ring “look”, so the demand for tall tires is small and getting smaller. The 15” tires will fade just like the 14” tires have. Obscure stuff doesn’t make it past computer inventory management. The old fashioned hardware store that had everything, now every hardware store has the same limited supply of only high traffic items.

 

Well....it does, but you damn sure have to pay for it.

 

What type of tires? Bias? Radials? Coker has a lot to offer you. I have Cooper radials on my little red truck that are 15's. They look like Comp TAs but have far better specs.

 

And 14" is starting to make a comeback. It goes in waves........

 

But what about the rest of the wheel? LOL

 

Popular 15" sizes will remain, odd sizes will be more difficult to find.

Its not like you can buy them now and stock pile, in 7 years when you need new ones, see whats available, figure it out.

 

BFG killed a lot of it's 14" and 15" line a few years ago. The market wasn't there like is for the larger diameters. They also upped their prices-----a lot. I can buy Coopers, get a better selection of sizes, at about 2/3 the cost of BFG.

I bought a BFG steering tire for my semi truck last year.......damn thing was made in CHINA!!!!

 

I have no trouble getting excellent used 13, 14 and 15" tires for the daily driver fleet.

 

15s in the sizes we normally like are hard to find, been like that for a while.
a lot better choices 16 and up
the 15s are popular with the tuner guys, very low profiles
I never liked 14s

 

Last month I bought new 15” tires for my chrome smoothies. Since I was going big & littles for tires & looking to match the front & rear tires, there definitely weren’t many choices. I ended up with 225/75/15 rear & 185/65/15 fronts in Hankook Kinergy st. Picture below was with the 20 year old tires on it but same exact sizes.





Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

Cooper , I think , dropped the 14" from the cobra line & 15" cobra's were hard to come by a few years ago ...

 

Notice that a lot of time when you see those big "rims" and O ring tires advertised it is for three and not four because they bent a rim and ruined a tire and can't afford a replacement.
I haven't bought 14's for a long time, bought a set of 14's for my OT daily that then got totaled. It may just be the tire store a guy goes to too as the local place I go to doesn't specialize or cater to one type of vehicle and they can have about anything you want on the next truck if it isn't in stock or at one of their other stores in the area.

 

Had enough trouble finding five 15 inch wheels for my 63 Impala. Tires no problem.

 

I know the life of a tire is about 5 yrs then it's recommended to buy new.
What about tires mounted on rims sitting in storage on a shelf...what the tire's life span?

 

15's seem pretty easy to find in Coopers now.

 

define easy to find.
I can find them online, but not in stock at the tire store. Or will have to wait for the truck from the warehouse.

 

Even locally hard to find 15s. The bigs we like to use on roadsters and early pickups in 265 270 275 etc. are almost non existant. I got 3 choices in one current search.

https://www.discounttire.com/fitmentresult/tires/size/265-75-15

 

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/sizes/results.jsp?diameter=15

not a lot of choices there
lots of sizes listed but it basically comes down to Cooper, Hankook and BF Goodrich. Some are AT tires, might work if ya shave all the crap off the sidewall

 

The question wasn’t about noticing it .

 

They are going the way of 14" tires, in that they are not being used (in the sizes we're accustomed to) on new cars, and have not been for a long time. This is nothing new. They won't go away as much as 14s did, because there are still a lot of older trucks etc that use them, still on the road.

But this is not a new trend...it's been going on a long time.