Members' Old Tire Stories

Tire Safety - Important Video - from Tom Stacey
This is a video that you all should view. I learned about this shortly after we moved to New Mexico. Hot ambient temperature and 75mph on I-25 resulted in the left front tire on my 1957 Pontiac losing its tread and disconnecting the parking light wiring and discarding the 'Star Chief' script on the fender. The tire did not loose air and I was able to roll into a rest area about a mile or so ahead where I installed the spare. Later I went back to the site but could only find a remnant of the Star Chief script.

When I contacted Coker Tire about the event they exclaimed 'but the tire is 7 years old!' Ever since I have religiously replaced tires at 5 years. By the way that Star Chief script cost me $85 at a swap meet a couple of years later.

Don't mess with old tires!

From Alphie Norman

This happened to us with my Mercury on the 2001 trip, Route 66, Our car stirring began to shake, so we went into a Goodyear tire, where we purchased a whole new set of tires. The ones taken off the car, were Coker tires and Goodyear people told us, Coker had sold us 10 year old tires. We thought they were brand new! When we got home, we contacted Coker, but they would not make them good, said if we bought 4 news ones from them, they would give us a $50 discount. We could not believe what they were telling us. They also wanted the old tires back, which we did not take with us, we had all the books, 3 people and all the luggages, + the car plaques. (I need to check out my 57 Chevy, for those were Coker tires also! They were also bought at the same time as the ones that were on the Mercury in 2001, so that means, they are maybe 19 years old.

Also on the Canada trip in 2004, I had a blow out in my Chevelle in the left rear tire on I-15 in Utah. Only thing left of the tire was the wall, I have a picture of me holding up what was left. Thankgoodness for the Zarnoskys, they stopped for us and so did two guys in a pick up truck that worked at a gas station, just up the rode from where I was broke down. Scary, so now before any trips, I check everything out. But this news cast taught me how to read the dates. My husband learned from the first time, but now I'm learning the safety now comes first...

From Paul Schneider

I have had a very similar experience. I told Rosemarie I was going over to mow the lawn where we have a pole barn, and I would be back in time for lunch. The mowing took longer then expected, so running a little behind time, I thought I would blow the carbine out of the '69 Bonneville convertible. I just got up to about 100 mph when I heard a loud hammering sound, so I started backing it down, still not knowing where the noise was coming from. Probably about 75mph I could now feel it in the steering wheel. One of the front tire treads had seperated , with about a two foot piece still attached, and the tire still held air. The two foot chunk had been beating hell out of the bottom of the fender, and the extra wide molding on the Bonneville. I changed the tire and drove over to our favorite tire store. This was back before the alert about old tires. These tires were on the car when I bought it, and I had probably had the car six or seven years by then. The tires still looked great, and with no weather checking.

I asked the store owner what he thought was the cause of the tire to separate, and he thought it was from too much speed. So, I had him put four new tires on, only we took them up a grade to get a high rated tire for speed. Later, I did manage to straighten out the fender and molding. I could still tell it wasn't perfect, but no one else seemed to notice.

That car wanted to cruise at 80 mph, and it did not have cruise control. You would be driving that car along at 60 mph, and then look down at the speedometer, and be surprised to find you were now doing 80 mph. I drove that car 11 years and enjoyed every mile. I did a couple laps with it on the rail at Michigan International. It did like to run!

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