Why doesn’t triple black work on a kustom?

I agree.... WWW's on 50's Caddies..

 

Below I blacked out the tires on the Inman Chrysler.
The spokewheels kinda look out of place now with the black tires IMO.

 

Not just convertibles......Vinyl top cars too....

 

On Cadzilla, the rims/wheel cover set up emulates wide whites without the wide white part...If you see what I mean.

 

Black paint, black interior... black wall tires, THAT's triple black

 

Tires are NOT part of the Triple black combination.

 

Right typically triple black means ext/int/ and a convertible top. But we get what he means.

Let us know what you do. What wheels, caps etc, does Cadzilla have?

I've thought about running 17's just because the car would handle a little nicer but I have to do wide whites to get it out of my system.

 

Triple black can refer to either, depending on circumstance. I'm pretty damned sure the O.P. was referring to blackwall tires as a part of the triple black equation, seeing as how he posted a picture of a coupe...
Straycat, I think it could definitely be done, but you will have to take that scheme into account when choosing certain things like trim (or lack thereof), wheels, etc. I believe that the reason it's uncommon is that most customs want to be in your face and eyepopping. Black, although sinister, is very subtle.

 

Ray Goulart OPlds had a beautiful black naugahyde interior, I woud love to emulate it in my 49 someday!

 

I don't think it can't work but it goes against the original goal of guys building customs. They wanted to make more ordinary brands of cars look sleek and expensive and that meant at the time Whitewalls and generally Caddy hubcaps. If you look back very few Cadillacs were customized but alot of their parts were used. Regular cars had blackwalls and painted wheels not customs it is just not what they were. The other thing I would think is that they are so large and with the wheels under fenders, unlike a hot rod, it just become one big undistinguishable sea of black where as a fenderless hotrod there is some open space around the wheels that give it some depth and life.

 

If they've got a vinyl/and/or carson styled top, they CAN be considered triple black!

 

I'm only worried about the small hubcap idea. Except for maybe the stock 50 Merc cap, small hubcaps usually symbolize "hot rod" or factory "muscle car" to me. I think the small cap has to be some custom made deal that is really innovative, completely different from anything before.

Oh yeah, you'll have to scrap the rotary telephone and change to a touch tone phone

 

What's that old saying, "if I have to explain it, you won't never understand", or something like that.
I think Denise has a point about the photography aspect. An older than me photographer once told me that he always carried something red to add to picture to give contrast. An all black car with blackwalls literally disappears in a photograph.
I have always liked all black with redline tires.

Slightly off topic, that same old guy said that whenever you are all set up to take a photograph, take it and then turn around and see the shot directly behind you.

 

Morning Mike,

Touch tone phone? LOL!!! Have you seen my new phone? I'll try to post some pictures
and send them to you, your going to love it.....

Here is my plan. I have some 17" Magnum steel wheels that have holes drilled out around
them. Yes they're ugly. One day I was playing around with my junk and I threw on a 15"
spun aluminum disc in the center. It covers all of the ugly and it makes you think this wheel
may have a chance. I've been studying hubcaps from the 50's Lot of kool design work
went into Hubcaps. I love the 57 Lincoln center cap. Plan was to cut out the center part
of the cap and mount it to the spun aluminum disc. I thought about painting the disc black
and powder coat the rest of the wheel in chrome. But I think if I was to polish the disc to
shine like chrome then with the center cap mounted it would really throw it over the top. I
was going to buy 17" wide whites but don't like the way they look. That is how the Blackwall
tire came to mind.

I agree with you using an aftermarket hub cap would not look right and give it a hot rod
appearance. That is why I'm trying to mix in a hub cap from the 50's to give it the look
that I want.

Thanks guys for all of the feedback lot of good stuff to make me think....Remember I'm
a Kustoms guy and when I said "triple black" it was obvious I didn't know what I was
talking about.

This is not the first time. LOL!!!

Happy Trails,

Mick

 

Go for it. The '55 Studebaker caps I picked up look like the ones on Cadzilla.

 

Speedway motors use to have polished moon screw on caps in their catalog. I bought some from them. They don't list them anymore but they might have some in stock. The polished ones are round (dome) looking in shape. The brushed ones looked more pointed but it is an optical illusion. The brushed ones are also dome shaped, but the way the light bounces off the brushed edges, makes them look a little pointed.

 

I had a guy give me a set of four to use for trophies or whatever. They are the old screw
on type and I didn't have a use for them untill my brain started working.... I think that the
disc needs somehting in the middle to break it up.

Stude was on my short list of donor caps....

Happy Trails,

Mick

 

Triple black on a hot rod means: body, wheels, tires. They are sometimes chopped so you wouldn't see the upholstery color, if it even had any. 3WindowLarry's car, the main example in this thread, had GREEN upholstery.

Triple black on a custom would mean: body, top, upholstery. They most always have a chrome or stainless hubcap covering most of the wheel, and most always have whitewalls, so nobody would even count the wheel colors. The '38 convert shown next to Cole's '36 is NOT triple black, because it has a white top.

 

black means lots of work , and i like work

 

I've just joined, but here's my 2c.

With a glossy, dark-coloured car you're not reading the surface colour as such but the surface finish, through reflections of things in the immediate vicinity. It's the same principle as a window pane that becomes a mirror if there's more light on your side than on the other side. I suppose that's where the sinister thing comes from: the shape isn't spelled out but only suggested by reflective highlights. It's like an impression sketch in a few lines, with no detail.

But this can be used to good effect on a voluptuously curved car. The best is when you can get reflections to form lazy S and Z lines that change and crawl and slither as the car moves by, or you move around it. But you need the curves, and the bodywork has to be damn near perfect.

Furthermore, colour has an effect on the apparent size of a car. Light colours tend to annex visual edges and bleed into adjacent shapes and thus make an object appear bigger than it would in a darker colour. Light-coloured sleds aren't really hard to pull off; they just need some sort of punctuation like trim pieces to break the shape up into digestible chunks. But light-coloured sleds are easy to get horribly wrong. Without something to set off the expanse of bright they can easily look bloated. Remember the attempts to apply the Euro monochrome thing to '49 Mercs? It just didn't work.

As regards the wheel and tyre thing, I think blackwalls on black wheels can impart a sense of purpose, that there is go to back up the show. The resulting gorilla-in-a-suit thing can be quite appealing.

How about blackwalls on black 18" wires, marked only by chrome hex centres and the bit of brake you see through the spokes?

 

Tripple black has always meant Black body, black top and black interior on a ragtop or hardtop with a vinyl top. in the past 50 years as a car nut this is the first time I have seen anyone try to use it in reference to tires.

As far as customs with black paint, tops and interiors I think one reason a lot of custom guys pass on the color is that it gets lost under the lights at indoor shows. Plus it doesn't usually photograph well on customs. Take a look at any show coverage in in any of the threads from the past several months and when you see a dark colored custom try to make out the details of the car in the photo. It takes one hell of a photographer to be able to bring that out with almost perfect conditions. Light and bright colored customs on the other hand yell out " here I am take my photo".
Just take a look at all the photo of Kirk"s Starliner. It doesn't matter who takes the photo or with what camera the car is very hard to take a bad photo of.
Then look at photos of one of my personal favorites, TimeBomb John's Ford. That car is very hard to get a decent photo of even though I feel it is one of the best looking customs out there.

As far as whitewall/black wall on a custom. I feel that the whitewalls what ever width are a part of the custom look and very few cars can carry off the look with black wall tires.