Technical 64 Impala riding on 27 year old tires.... Too old?

Wow yea even more critical for emergency response vehicles. Do the firehouses adhere to any special rules on their tires these day I wonder? I bet they do have a max age on the fire and ambulance rigs.

 

Cragars. Yuck. Put some Supremes on that thing.

 

yes.
fine if you trailer them, but driving sounds like a bad idea, they could be good burnout tires however, nothing smokes like an old tire.

 

Those Supremes definitely give it that lowrider look, but I'm not into that. I'd rather stay on the other side of the fence. I knowingly have what is arguably the #1 sought after lowrider car ever made, but this one will not become a "lowrider" as far as lowrider culture goes. I may play with suspension mods again and change up the wheels again but it will be more of the muscle car era side than the lowrider feel. I don't know if I'll even keep the drop spindles up front, may go back to factory ride height and throw some sporty wheels like Cragars or D's on it to get back to a period feel. I went through a phase when I was younger of thinking about an air ride system, and some kind of Supreme or wire look, but I've long since moved past that.

 

This F-100 had a set of 9 year old radials, and on a two lane road at 50, the rubber came off one of the tires. I went in the ditch and rolled. An old buddy of mine, in his late 70's at the time, was ejected and hurt, but lived to tell about it. I have a set of 20 year old Coopers on my 65 Falcon, and need to replace them.

 

Ah damn! That was a tough loss and a close call. Glad you are all ok to tell the story. Good lesson to take away.

 

The tires on my ‘58 were over 10 years old and had plenty of tread, but they were harder than Chinese arithmetic. I got nervous about the age and replaced them, the difference was night and day. I feel safer with new rubber, old cars are not as crashworthy as their modern counterparts.

 

I've never been a fan of supremes. On the right car they look okay, but I've always attributed the look to "poor man's custom wheels" for some reason.

Since you mentioned the muscle car look and a different stance, this is what I think of for a 64 Impala as a muscle car. Good stance with a rake and Corvette rallye wheels. This is my dad's 64 that he's had for 30-odd years. It has had a few iterations, but this is my favourite.

 

Cool car! Super Sport too, that's awesome. And you don't see that level of blue on a 64 very often, so that's cool, and unique. I love the rallye look but dad hates that so that look is out for us lol. Since he and I share the car, we'll have to come up with something we both enjoy. I'm a fan of most things fairly traditional, rallyes, torque thrust type spokes, Cragar 5-spokes, or even a lot of other stock wheel/cap combos from the period. I do not, however, like the non SS hubcaps from 64.

I'd love nothing more than to see several more pictures of your 64 somehow! Thanks for the share, I love it...

 

I'll see if I can dig some up. Ah, the sharing so you don't get to do whatever you want. It's surprising that you do occasionally see other ones in that shade of blue, considering they never came in that colour.

 

The 64 my dad bought when I was 14, and when I went into high school it was a father-son restoration project. I painted it in his garage when I was 15 with a single stage acrylic enamel paint, which is what is still on it today. It is his car but we share it and I have been doing a lot of work on it over the years. I drove it around as a high school kid and had lot of fun with it. It lives in my shop these days and I have been doing a lot of work to it lately. Currently it is waiting a TH350 to be rebuilt. We're converting it over from Powerglide.

Yea not many people choose those shades of blue with the custom color paint jobs on these cars, but I've always like blues on them. I like the light factory blue color as well. There's one in my general area that I've seen at a couple shows that has a very similar color blue to your dad's ride, stands out for sure. He's part of a lowrider based club on the other side of the water and rolls some 13" wires so it's a different vibe all around anyway.

 

We saw one at the Puyallup Goodguys show in 2015 that was the same blue, a 64 SS with the same light blue interior. That car had about 18" wheels, but it was funny to see one in the exact same colour. I don't recall if that car was from Washington or not.

 

409 Station wagon w/air spring's on all 4 corner's would really change the attitude of that sweet ass Impala...
It would still ride nice, too.

 

I wonder if a set of old tires are safer with tubes in them?
On another note, my mom inherited her father’s car after he passed away in 1974. I recall the car sat in the driveway for a few months before she started driving it regularly. Apparently it developed some flat spots and those sections came apart after she drive the car for a while. The car was no more than five years old at the time and the tires might have been replaced once before she got the car so they couldn’t have been more than a few years old. Luckily there wasn’t any serious incident because of that.
I bought a late 60’s Cadillac in about 1985 with only 40k miles on it. Apparently the car had sat for some time and also had developed flat spots. They were Sears radials so when they started coming apart Sears replaced them for free at the time because they barely had any tread wear. It took a few months for the whole process of getting them replaced. One would start thumping, I’d take it in, get it replaced. Another few weeks another one would go and so forth. Only one blew out but it was in the rear so the car just started wallowing when the tire gave out. It was a huge 4 door sedan. Probably the biggest car I ever owned.

 

There was a time when Cragar S/S could be bought drilled for 1 pattern, but I don't think they do that for ,ost of them now. There are also hub-centric rings available in different sizes that might alleviate the centering issues.

I'm a big fan of 5-spokes on cars like yours (really, almost anything)

 

Tubes won't make any improvement for old tires and might make them worse. If the tire blows, its usually because the cords in the tire separate, those cords would likely just puncture the tube. The tubes might even help keep the heat in the tires which is one of the things that cause problems with the old tires.

Usually the problem with old tires is the rubber bond breaks down and the components separate. Often the tire tread begins to come off of the tire casing (the casing is made 1st, then any tire belts are added and the tread is the finishing touch). If the tire tread comes completely off, or merely separates causing a blow out, you end up with a very fast (or very slow) flat that in itself could be tragic.

Usually the most body damage occurs when the tire tread only partly comes off the casing, and you have a 2' long (or even a 6" long) tail that beats on the car with every time the tire goes around. At 40 mph, that is a lot of body pounding that tire tread tail can give a car.

 

Cragar still has a direct drill series of the S/S wheel which they offer in several bolt patterns, widths, and backspaces. They still sell the unilug version as well.

 

Ouch!! Thanks for the eye opener Marty! Glad there were no serious injuries (except to the Furd). You've got me rethinking my tires... They're 10+ years old and my wife has finally expressed an interest in driving my '51, so I think new skins are in order before she takes the reigns and gets her own set of keys!

 

The last fatality wreck I ran in my career, involved a young couple in a car with aged bald tires. The driver had come out of the car somehow and he was walking around refusing treatment.

The passenger; his wife, wound up where the driver should have been. The car was mangled. She was responsive, I talked to her, and she would respond to basic questions. It looked to be a challenging extrication. I expected a lot of work to free her lower extremities.

When we popped the door open it relieved a lot of the pressure. Instead of having to work to free her lower extremities, she just slithered out because she was all broken up inside. Not good. From the time of popping the door and getting her on the backboard, her life went away. As soon as we relieved the pressure, she was gone.

I'll never forget her eyes as she laid on that board, fixed and blueish green. I took my fire glove off and patted her on the forehead and closed those eyes. Trauma Death in the Field.

The state troopers made me write a statement as she lay in the highway awaiting the coroner and more investigators. I overheard the troopers debating whether or not to charge the husband with vehicular murder due to tire condition. They did not, but they talked about it.
Tire condition is no joke.

 

It's centrifugal force that pulls the tires apart as the bond between the layers get weaker. If air can get in there it may accelerate the process, but the tubes would only very slightly delay the inevitable, if at all.

 

My 58 Yeoman had new BFG T/A's put on in 1990, had probably less than 10k miles on them. The pix on the car was at about 30 years, the tires sitting on the floor at 32. Two of them threw belts right after I had the car appraised.

 

I think I've settled on a set of Cooper Cobra GT tires for the 64. Pretty interested in a set of some kind of 5-spokes for it too but don't know yet. Either way, it'll get rubber after the trans swap work is done.

 

I’ve wondered also if it’s important to keep radials on the same side when rotating them, going from front to back only and never going right to left or vice versa. That’s what I always do when switching to snow tires and back to normal ones. I’ll mark the tires as to what side they were on so they go back on the side they came from.
I’ve heard long time ago that once radials spin one way you don’t want to mount them to spin in the other direction as that will cause the tread to separate.

 

This ^^^.

 

With radials, if all 4 tires are the same size (and the tires are not directional), you can put them anywhere on the vehicle. Most of my custom stuff has different size tires front and back. I swap them side to side occasionally. Especially the rears with an open diff. It does not accelerate tire failure to swap them side to side with a (non-directional) radial tire.

 

Funny I used to think that radials became directional after they were used for a while. I used to blame tread separation on running them on the wrong side since some weren’t that old when that happened to me.
I had one tire separate on the rear back at a time when I only drove Cadillacs years ago. I was on the Hollywood freeway an I sped up to pass someone. I felt this big vibration coming from the back and before I had time to slow down, there was this big thud and then the vibration stopped. I saw a huge section of tread flying off behind me. Luckily it didn’t hit anyone and I pulled to the shoulder. The tread was completely gone with nothing but belts showing. I didn’t have a spare so I drove back home about 20 miles on surface streets. Since I made it home without further mishap, I thought maybe the tire had a tube but it didn’t. There was a big chunk of tread stuck inside the rear part of the fender where it met with the rear bumper. It was a bitch to pull it out since it still had some belts sticking out of the piece. There really wasn’t any damage other than some scuffs and scratches inside the wheel well. That old Caddy was built like a tank. I got all new tires for it afterwards.

 

They used to say that about radials, always keep them going the same direction. With improvements in manufacturing I don't think that's the case anymore unless the tire is marked to the direction of rotation. And I wonder about that, too. I had a set of tires put on an OT car a few years back that were supposed to be directional, but they put one on backwards. Never noticed it until several months later, and it never wore any different than the rest of them.

 

I’ve had a set of directional tires before. The pattern on the tread was a reason for that. I would imagine it was more for traction and fuel economy. They would have probably been noisy too if mounted wrong.

 

A big part of "directional" tread pattern is water-shedding on wet roads.
It is not a good idea to have them on the wrong way. Less grip in the wet can end badly.......

 

I have a set of 235/70/15 Grand Am Gt radials on the rear of a slightly O/T car that I just got on the road. Like yours, mine look amazing but I know the car has been off the road since 1989. I have took it on my test loop at a somewhat slower speed, but I am headed to the tire store for a fresh set of Cobras before this car gets driven. Blowouts suck.