Tried the "make a wide whitewall " with the grinder

Lets see um

 

Engineers and mechanics never get along.

 

Do you know anything about tire construction? Say 1/4" sidewall depending on tire plus the 3/16" or so for the white band than the 1/32 to cover it all up. You're only removing the 1/32" above the white band. Not all the way across the sidewall.

 

hes not going to get it Chieftan..his pocket protector destroyed his ability to think outside the box. or step into the reality of what is acctually being done here

 

I am no tire engineer. If I remember correctly The white and black rubber are the same. The black is colored black on purpose. They make part of the tire white (whitewalls) for cosmetics. To make it easy and repeatable they put a white ring in the mold before vulcanization. The engineered whitewall ( thin, wide, rwl ) is already raised from the sidewall ( built into the white ring). They scrape the top of the raised part to reveal the whitewall or design that was intended. The black and white rubber on the sidewall is there to protect and help add stability to the steel in the side wall.

I maybe talking out my ass but I think that is the general jist of things.

 

......Lets see um.

That's not the question........I'm trying to find out where the guy got 4 ground tires, delivered for $150. Fuck

 

Where'd you get 'em????

 

Oh sorry Mis read your post..lol .. I thought you were the one that got um for 150 delivered..yeah i would say, good deal

 

seriously? I'm not an engineer but even I figured the belts made the tire, not that little bit of rubber on the side. How could 1/4" rubber on the side be holding up a 2ton car?!


Glad to see this thread as it reminded me I need to grind my Coopers, which I heard work pretty good to grind down.

Heck, I've corded and curbed plenty of tires to the metal and not had them explode(but I replace them asap too)

A blowout is hardly a death sentence unless you make it into one, and if you're that afraid, stay away from hotrods! They're daaaaaaaangerous!!!!! ;-)

Good to know engineers can talk out their ass and not from experience just like the rest of us! ;-)

 

I'm no tire engineer, but I "also" have the "I" disease...

"I" worked at a tire store in 68-69.
"I" unloaded many a 40 foot trailer of new bias tires.
"I" noticed that those narrow whites and redlines were made by grinding into the sidewall, to get down to the color.


So, ..."I" think it is still OK to grind down to the white.

"you" don't believe they did it then?; go dig in the tire pile at an OLD boneyard...and you will see that "I" am right.

By the way, I'm going with blackwalls

 

if you had any fucking clue how much rubber you take off to get to the white youd keep your bullshit comments to your self. i plan on doing this i if go the white wall route on my 49, i practiced on some old rubber first becuase i thought it was a bit sketchy my self, but after actually trying it out. its no big deal. The tire looks good to me man. keep it up!

 

"I" second that shit!

 

Yeah I'm over in Billerica. Tried this on a few tires and it does work pretty well.

 

You are NOT grinding down a structural part of the sidewall! It is a frikin black overlay on top of the whitewall. Its like 1/32" at most. Thats how the tire mfgr makes the narrow whitewall in the first place, by grinding off part of the black overlay. Check out the El Do on this link and then go to his youtube link to see how he does it.
http://www.airforums.com/forums/f161/feathercraft-restoration-37500-33.html

 

Von Rigg Fink,King Richard,sooooo......Ummm.....are you guys still going to be sitting at the same table next HAMB meet and greet?

 

This guy is going to try making his own WWW's tomorrow.

 

i sent a new set of 205 75 15's to whitey's white walls in vasilia, and he's puttin 4 " ww on em' for 150$ so my www only cost me 200$ pretty good deal!!!i have his number for those interested!!!!

 

Got em off ebay about a year and a half ago.
Can't remember the company, but it was out of California.
I did a search for 13" whitewall and they came up.
Feedback was excellent and so was the price so I bought them.
Only thing I regret is that I didn't buy another set or two.
I have a printed page of the old ad somewhere.
If I can find it I'll pass it along.
At the time they also had some 14" and 15" tires listed.
Then at least you'll have the business that did them.
Hope this helps.

 

You are definitely right.
The really old bias ply spare, that was in the trunk of my 62 when I bought it, had about a 3/4" ground narrow white strip.
You could tell by the tire, and the associated pile of crap and dirt on top of it, that it hadn't moved for many years.
By the way, it was ground almost 1/8" in (much less than my 1/32" ground radials) and still had air in it.
This is not the first really old bias ply tire that I've seen with shaved whites.
If it's so dangerous, why did the dealerships contract out to the local guys to come shave tires on their cars in the 50s and 60s.
I guess its a miracle our parents, grandparents and some of us survived all of those blowouts.
Guess they didn't have enough Engineers around to set em straight back then.

 

Sure..I got nothing against the guy..its all good.

unless an Engineer cant sit next to a hot rodder

really , its not unusual for people to misunderstand what is really being done when this proceedure is completed on a tire..and to some it seems crazy..but in all reality..there aint nothin to it.
theres alot of mis-conceptions in the automotive world, some will never be accepted by all.

he's entitled to his opinion..it will not bother me at all if he goes and spends 800 bucks on a set of WWW's while i spend 150..

 

My official title at the airlines where I work is:

"G-Job consulting engineer".

Am I qualified?

 

DO you KNOW how wide whites are made at the factory?

 

I have many thousands of miles on mine, no problems at all.

 

Man what a bunch of battling babies on here!

The part that you are grinding away has no structural integrity. Look at it this way, EVERYONE sues over everything today. A soccer mom hits a few curbs lightly and the white letter tires are down to wide whites. Easily. So if all those tires were going to blow out the tire manufacturers would have a serious bag of shit on their hands.

You have to dig a LOT deeper than what you are doing to make wide whites in order to compromise the integrity of the tire.

And yes I have done it a bunch too. Some work, some do not. The guy with that 65 or so Pontiac a few pages back, those looked killer!

 

Five pages on homemade whitewalls? I knew there had to be a good argument or two going on. Whew.

My question: I sometimes scrub the white letters on my tires with a Brillo pad to brighten them up, will I crash?

And hey, what is the guy in the photo in post #39 looking at?

 

He ground down the helmet in his hand to get a wide white racing stripe... Now he's got permanent whiplash.

..you just never know what can happen if you grind away those important structural layers...




I like that time tested grinding method.
However, I found a new complete set of whitewall Firestone radials off that auction site. $260 delivered to my door.
Will get them on the road on Saturday.

 

Tell me about it, I was a mechanic before I went to engineering school. I'm always fighting with myself.

 

Man, what's wrong with you? I'm a mechanical engineer, you think that makes us Gods or something? I don't remember learning about tire construction when I went to school.

 

Give up. We're having a battle of wits with an unarmed person when it comes to the subject at hand.

King: Don't know you, but you appear to have ASSumed a lot here based on your experience in completely unrelated fields. I work with tire manufacturers on a daily basis...Goodyear, M/T, Nitto, Toyo. So please don't tell me you know more than I do.

As I said, removing ONLY the black and uncovering the white is nothing more than a cosmetic change. IF tires where that sensitive they would BLOW UP every time someone scuffed a curb.

 

I gotta go and put 6 new tires on a police tactical bus. I might just grind 'em down to prove there's nothing wrong doing this.