[imported_pint4]

I am looking for wide whitewall 6.50 x 16 radial tires for my 1933 Buick Series 60. I am tired of the bias tires and how they track every groove or crack in the road. Any advice regarding where to buy? Where to get the best price? Best value?
Thanks.
Bob

email address: pint4@new.rr.com

[Packard enthus.]

I have been using whide whites purchased thru COKER TIRE and DIAMOND BACK for many years. As a side note, the 7:50 16 wide whites on my 6,000 lb. Packard V-12 are dimensionally within a SMALL fraction of an inch to an ORIGINAL 8:25-16 the factory specs. say the car should have.

Much of my driving is over VERY bad roads, and extremely high speeds in hot weather - never had a failure.

[imported_pint4]

Why are the sizes different? I wonder why more antique cars are switched over to radials to get the improved handling and ride?
Bob

[De Soto Frank]

Coker makes a radial equivalent to use as an alternative to your stock 6.50 x 16 tires.

I believe it is listed as a 6.50 R 16 in their on-line catalog (www.coker.com). They have nearly the same sidewall height as the bias, and are slightly wider where the tread contacts the ground.

The other year I spoke to a gentleman with a '41 Buick convertible sedan who was running them, and he said they were a tremendous improvement.

The WWW radial runs about $200 a piece, as opposed to about $120 for the 6.50 x 16 bias-ply.

[RocketDude]

WOW! $200 a piece..?? OMG..! That's $1600.00 for four tires..! $800.00 for the tires, and $800.00 for what ever my wife wants 'cause I spent money on the car,... again..! That will be my next purchase. I hope for that price, they are top quality and I won't have to be buying any more for several years..!
No problems putting radials on stock 50's GM wheels?
I'm sending for a catalog as suggested above.....

[De Soto Frank]

Caveat emptor...

They're pricey, so you might as well make sure your front suspension is nice and snug, and properly alighned...

You don't want worn king-pins chewing-up $200 tires...


I think I'd have to drive a 1941-'48 MoPar equipped with those tires to be fully convinced of their worth.

[A by the sea]

I am not familiar with your type of car, but if it is tracking the ruts in the road I would be quick to suspect worn steering.

I know with the 65-71 mustangs they will track something horrible with worn out upper control arms. They also will pull when braking as the weight shift changes the alignment. The problem gets much worse when you put on radials.

A friend went into a spin with his 69 convertible when he had to brake fast at 90 MPH. The next weekend I put $500 in parts on the car.


If you put on a bunch of new parts then it tracks where you point the wheel.

I had bias plys on a mustang for a few weeks. I drove it once in the rain and put new radials on it the next day.

[Packard enthus.]

Your advice to make sure the "hunting" and "tracking" isnt the fault of bad "front end" components is an excellent, if obvious suggestion. Obviously, jacking a car up and checking for excessive "play" in components is the first step.

However, it is not the whole answer.

Let me begin this discussion by noting I drove cars, both new & used - and when I say "used", I mean WELL used, with bias tires, when that was all that was available for big American cars (up thru the end of the 1960's). And it is true that for the FIRST couple of years they were introduced, American radial tires produced dismal reliability and handling.

I am not well-informed on tire technology, so I can't tell you WHY this is so. But it is a FACT that old style bias tires DID NOT "hunt" or "track" road imperfections anywhere NEAR as bad as some of the "repro" bias tires we have today.

In my own case, the 1940's era tires on my car got too dry and hard for me to trust. So in the late 1960's I bought some "repro" bias tires for it.

Over the years, I got so frightened of the unsafe "hunting" and "tracking" of my twelve-cylinder Packard, I pulled the very complicated IFS apart TWICE looking for the culprit, making the reasonable but wrong assumption "must be the steering mechanism somewhere..? ". And this is a 6,000 lb. car with VERY wide tires (8:25 x 16)that was known in its day for having marvelous handling and ride.

Yes, I was worried about those magic changes to the laws of physics, by which we are told by self-appointed experts", that somehow, 30 lbs. per sq. in. on the side wall of a much more flexible and compliant radial tire is "harder" on old rims than those hard bias sidewalls, so for a while I resisted. As a side note - you get what you pay for. If a car was cheap when new, it didnt get any better with age. I have NO doubt that stories of rim failure on cheap cars are correct. No amount of restoration will make a car that was "economy class" when new, have any greater margin of safety than its original "cost cutting" design had when it rolled out the show-room door.

So - yes, ESPECIALLY if your car was designed primarily to be an economy car when new..by all means..do what we ALL should do when examing wheels. ALL of us ! INSPECT those wheels carefully& REGULARLY. Old metal CAN be weakened after years of abuse. What were YOUR wheels subjected to before YOU got the car ! Those old rims CAN fail. But dont blame the tires !

Some years ago, I finally gave in, and now have a set of tires that are modern radials, but with white-walls of the same width as was popular in the late 30's.

Putting those radial tires on my car, was like putting it thru a time machine. Now it steers, handles, corners, rides, the way Packard Twelves were famous for when they were in service. So far, with some 20 years of extreme heat - bad roads - an extreme speeds (fun to throw a Packard Twelve big sedan into a four wheel drift..actualy, they drift quite nicely !) and so far ( about 50,000 mi., havnt had a rim/wheel failure......!

You will find the people at Coker well-informed. They can steer you to the right tire for your car.

I havnt talked to anyone there for some years, so it MAY be that for legal reasons, their lawyers may have told their people you HAVE to go thru that nonsence about "radials being harder on rims than bias tires". I dont know. I do know that anyone who has worked with tires, and has even the vaguest comprehension of the laws of physics, will be able to tell you how much softer and more compliant the side-walls are than present day "repro" bias tires.