Early Car Hobby & Antique Tires

[Guest Silverghost]

My late 92 y/o Father who started collecting Antique & Classic autos before WW II when asked what was the most difficult parts to find in the early days of the car collecting & restoration hobby would always respond with just one item~~~

OLD TIRES !

He stated that Sears Roebuck & Montgomery Ward and some others were still selling the more common older tire sizes for Ford Model "T" & "A" cars but many other rarer obsolete & oddball older Antique tire & inner-tube sizes were very hard, if not impossible to find indeed !

He & his car collecting friends would often stop at old tire dealers & service stations and ask if they had any old oddball obsolete size tires & inner- tubes in stock ?

He and his car collector friends would buy everything they found !

Old size tires & inner- tubes were often traded among Antique auto collectors. Dad had a big stack of old NOS & good usable old tires & tubes in my Grandmother's carriage house loft .

Many of these old & NOS tires suffered from tire rubber rot and were good for show only. If you tried to drive too far on them they would just powder away, split or blow-out !

During WW II getting ANY tires & tubes at all , new or old, was a major problem !

Tires were not being made for the general civillian population !

All rubber and Nylon cord went to the war effort ! They were considered vital strategic materials.

Folks were in fact riding on old bald tires with heavily patched inner-tubes.

Dad luckily got his new tires for his daily driver because he was involved in vital Navy war work building & designing Navy ships & submarines .

He was the Chief Electrical Engineer for the US Navy Yard in Philadelphia with 150 other engineers working directly under him.

He had to drive to US Navy shipyards all up-and-down the US East Coast constantly.

The Navy supplied him with all the fuel, oil, and tires he needed !

Almost everyone else could not buy ANY new tires, inner-tubes or a new car battery~~~

Gasoline & lube oil was also rationed based on a person's need !

Many cars were put-up on blocks for storage for the duration of the war because of this shortage of Gasoline, lube oil, tires and a new working battery !

There was a black market selling and stealing old & new tires & car batteries, gasoline etc during the WW II years !

Folks would often take their car battery inside overnight~~~

Lest it be stolen !

ALL New tire production was for the war effort for millitary use !

Old tires were also a very big War Scrap Drive item as Japan had a strangle-hold on many natural rubber plantations !

New synthetic rubber blends were developed during WW II because of the short supply of natural tree rubber .

As a result of the scrap drives many good old size tires from the teens, 20s & 30s were in fact scrapped & recycled !

After the war old Antique & Classic tire sizes were very scarce.

The war scrap drives and civillian use during the war depleated the existing stock of old auto tires sizes.

Many old tire sizes never went back into production after the war as there was little new demand for the Antique early tire sizes.

Early Auto Collectors would often trade old usable tires among each other.

Dad would often tell the story of seeing a farmer planting a grove of Christmas Trees near his home.

The farmer was using old tires as a weeding ring around his new small tree saplings.

Dad stopped and made the farmer an offer he could not refuse on a number of almost new & rare Antique tire sizes that the farmer had used !

There was no such thing as Antique & Classic Reproduction tires in the very early days of our hobby until the late 50s-60s.

If you could not buy NEW tires from Sears or Wards you had to scrounge and hunt aggressivly for them at old tire dealers, and service stations , junkyards, barns, and garages!

Early collectors would also buy old worn-out & bald tires if the sidewalls were still good.

They would have these old tires re-capped with new tread .

Re-capping the tread area of old tires was a big business in the USA until the mid-1970s when the only re-capping done after this time was for truck, heavy equipment & cheap winter snow tires.

Today re-capping with new tire tread is still done by the trucking and heavy road building equipment industry only in the USA .

Later on several bigger car collectors themselves searched out old tire molds and equipment and started making new reproduction tires for the old car hobby !

That's how the reproduction tire business all started.

Many old original tire molds were found in Central & South America !

I remember myself trying to hunt down old style "red-line" muscle-car and Corvette tires in the late 70s-early 80s !

This was the very same thing Dad & his friends had done just decades before !

NOS "Redlines" were bringing $2000 a set in those days for old & possibly rotten show-only tires !

Think about this the next time you see the high prices for rare-size reproduction Antique & Classic tires~~~

Many collectors complain about this ~~~

BUT ~~~

We are just lucky today to be able to buy any NEW old style tire sizes at all ! ~~~

At any price !

I know~~~

I have been around & involved in this old car hobby all of my life~~~ 55 years !

My late Father~~~

Since the early 1930s !

Edited January 12, 2011 by Silverghost (see edit history)

[DAVE A]

I agree wholeheartedly when you say that in many cases, tires are the most dificult thing to find in a restoration. It doesn't have to be one of those big classics to cause a problem. I have looked for almost 3 years for 500 X12 military tread tires for my Crosley Farm o Road. They just can't be found. I have officially looked EVERYWHERE!!! I have found almost every other part I needed easily, even a rare hydraulic pump, but tires are simply a no go!!! Impliments for the Farm O Road are also rare but they are a want not a need like tires. I have had to change the way I will show the vehicle due to the lack of 4 military tread tires. I will have to show the vehicle in "Farm" configuration with tractor tires on the rear .

Almost as tough to find are 4.25 X12 street tires needed for the pre war Crosley. There, at least, I can get away with 4.50 X 12s , but don't turn any corners too tight!!!

[Dave Henderson]

I was a kid with a morning newspaper route during WWII. One morning while delivering papers I came upon a sad sight, a '41 Chevy up on cinder blocks with its 2 front wheels and tires stolen. That presented the owner with a serious problem (in addition to the financial loss). The ration board had to be approached in order to appeal for replacements. That Chevy stayed on blocks for a while. No extra tires beyond the spare were permitted to be retained. I'm sure there were many salted away, it was human nature. I don't recall how cars with dual side mounted spares were handled, there weren't many old enough in our area to have had them. A 35 mph speed limit was also in force to save gas and tires. The early synthetic tires weren't very good. Desperate measures were taken to prolong the useful life of bad old tires, such as "boots" to shore up a bad spot, and liners that went inside the casing and provided additional layers of cords for reinforcement. In Virginia the state safety inspection allowed completely bald tires to pass as long as there were no cords showing!

[jdome]

You coud just cut a log for tires as was shown on the "photo without caption" photo of last week. There are a lot of brass era cars with odd size wheels that were switched out with Ford T wheels and rims because the od size tires were not available.

[hddennis]

Funny you should mention this SilverGhost. Just this afternoon while watching our rare inch of ice & snow in Middle Georgia I stumbled across this on the "About" home page of the AACA:

"The Fall Meet was moved to the Devon Horse Show Grounds in 1946 and this became the site of the Annual Fall Meet. Also in 1946, an invitation to the Golden Jubilee of the automobile industry in Detroit came to AACA and it was decided to drive there with antique cars in a tour group. The name "Glidden Tour" was proposed and this became the first of the Revival Glidden Tours. It was this event that prompted Firestone to make up new tires for these historic vehicles. One of the Detroit highlights came when George Green received a gold-colored Hudson for the performance of his venerable Cross Country 1904 Oldsmobile. This first Tour proved so popular that with tires at last available, the Glidden Tour once again became a national institution. As these Tours entered new areas, greater interest in antique cars spread and grew, as did AACA itself"

Never knew this was how production started again.

Howard Dennis

[TG57Roadmaster]

The late Gene Cofer related to us a similar story that when considering vintage car

purchases in the early-'50's, he would walk away from a deal if the car's tires were bad.

Howard, at Detroit's Auto 100 Centennial and Parade in 1996, this newly-restored

'46 Hudson appeared, a tribute to the George Green car to which the article referred.

Larger

It wore a Golden Jubilee license plate, but I seem to recall that it was a replacement of

the original, which was lost in a fire(?). This is when I wish my memory was better!

TG

[Guest Silverghost]

Henry Austin "Austie" Clark and the famous early TV, Radio, & Movie singer James Melton along with several other early mega-collectors twisted the arm of one of their friends & fellow collectors in the Firestone family to drag out some old tire molds and re-make some early tires.

Denman, (now out of business as of this spring), was also one of the first to make reproduction tires.

As I said earlier Ford "A" & "T" tire sizes really never totally went out of tire production.

Devon & Radnor PA was a hotbed of early Antique & Classic car collecting.

In fact many antique car clubs started in this area.

The area was, and still is rather an isolated rural Horse Farm area where there were plenty of beautiful pastural country roads to drive your antique autos. There was also little traffic to contend with !

Some of the first antique car auctions in the country were heald in this area also.

Several area collectors had barns & fancy stables/ carriage houses full of old antique autos.

My Father kept his growing collection of Brass-Era cars at a family member's old unused stable in this area. The cars were each kept in their own horse stalls . .

Odd and obsolite tires were a major problem for early car collectors like my Dad & his friends.

Dad often drove on old rotten tires he picked-up some place that often powdered & wore away quickly' or worse yet self-destructed if you tried to drive on them for any long distance at any speed. !

The old mechanical car parts themselves were really not the problem issue as there were plenty of almost complete antique cars everywhere !

And old cars were very CHEAP !

Tires were really the BIG problem issue that these early auto collectors had to contend with !

Edited January 11, 2011 by Silverghost (see edit history)

[Guest frazer51]

I can remember a time after WW2 that there were tires that had a small red oval with the stamping S3 into that oval, this had a meaning. Does anyone recall and know what it stood for?

I remember in about 1942 when i was 10 years old my older brother was home on leave before he was to ship over to Europe. We as a family including my brother decided to travel to Cleveland to visit other members of our family. It was about a 200 mile trip from our home in S. Western Pa. We were about 20 miles into our trip in the family's 1935 Ford 2 Door when one of the tires had a blowout. The next town on our way was Washington, Pa. and we stopped at a place that sold tires. I guess the fact that my brother was a solder and with some phone calls or what ever we were able to purchase a new tire. We completed the trip and got back home with out an incident.

I can also recall that during the War years people would record the serial numbers from all of their car tires. As kids we did a thing to control obesty[not heard of back then with kids] plus we had no money to spend on toys and it was called "rolling tires". You would start a tire rolling down the street then you ran along side of it and kept slapping the tire to keep it going. About that time a neighbor who had a tire missing would run after you and check the serial number of the tire you were rolling.

Another thing that a few fellows did if they had a tire with a damaged casing but plenty of thread they would cut off the beads and slip this over a bald tire. I had no idea how this worked out for them.

I reminded myself that I still have some of the "Stamp Books" that were used during the War , these were my mothers. I'll see if there are any for gas or tires.

Edited January 11, 2011 by frazer51 (see edit history)

[hddennis]

We restored a 1933 Plymouth in the 1980's that had 11,000 miles. It had been owned by a gentleman in NYC with a very German name who rarely went out during WWII. In the glovebox was a record of all the tire serial numbers and apparently there were periodic inspections and if a tire showed up unrecorded you had better have a good explanation of how you obtained it!

Howard Dennis

[Dave Mellor NJ]

Although 19 and 21" tires were still being sold by sears up till the early 80s, it was much more common to see Model A owners switching to the then plentiful '35 V8 16" wheels so they could use the readily available 16 inch tires.

[trimacar]

I remember early on that the museum in Arkansas was selling tires, for some reason I think they made them in the basement? It was a museum owned by a Rockefeller at the time, on Petit Jean Mountain in Morillton (?SP?). I seem to remember the tires were PJA brand. This would have been in the 1960's, when, as mentioned, only a few tire sizes were available, and very few, for the early cars.

I have a 1910 Hudson fore-door roadster that suffered the "change wheel" fate. Luckily, the original hubs were kept, but it was switched over with demountable rims for a 30x3.5 tire, a tire too small to hold the weight of the car.....

[Guest bofusmosby]

This thread is a very interesting read. Being born in '56, I had no idea about the tire issue during WWII. Thank you for the history lesson.

[Guest Silverghost]

David is correct~~~

Winthrop Rockefeller the grandson of John D., and brother of Nelson, indeed did start a car museum.

In fact he bought the collections of several early collectors as the starting basis of his museum. The James Melton collection was but one collection that he bought.

Rockefeller did in fact start an early antique tire production business from his museum's basement !

All tires were made to order !

Dad once told me that Winthrop in fact lost money on every tire that he made and sold~~~ And he really did not care as he produced tires for the love of the Antique car hobby !

Winthrop Rockefeller is often forgotten today.

He was a true pioneer in the Antique car hobby movement .

Edited January 11, 2011 by Silverghost (see edit history)

[mdsbob]

I seem to remember the tires were PJA brand.

The logo on the tires was/is PJA Pneumatic with the logo of the museum between the "PJA" and "Pnuematic".

The molds for this venture were purchased from Gehrig.

As a side note there was a Mercer at the 2010 Pebble Beach that completed the driving portion of the tour with dual spares and all 6 tires were PJA Pnuematics.

[Marty Roth]

For many years we attended the Petit Jean Mountain Swap Meet, hosted by MOTAA, Mid-America Old Time Auto Association, held on the grounds of the museum which housed the Winthrop Rockefeller collection - I still have my swap and car corral spaces.

The tire molds in the basement of the building reminded me of when my Mom's uncle made military tires during WWII, and recapped tires for local folks in the Linden/Edison, Colonia/Iselin, NJ area for years after the war. The aroma of those days is still in my mind's nostrils.

The Rockefeller Ranch hosted many great parties, and while we were not necessarily invited, I did inadvertantly attend one.

The ranch was famous for its Santa Gertrudis cattle.

[dl456]

I have a set of 4 (all white) on my 1914 Grant roadster. These are clincher type on wire wheels. I have replaced all of the tubes but the only replacement tires that i have found are made in Vietnam.

These old tires are a bit of a concern "at speed". From past experience it's quite possible to

end up in a soybean field if not careful.

Dennis

[92GTA]

Wow, very cool to read! Being 30, I also had no idea about any of this!

I won't complain about the cost of the Coker repro Firestones on my '56 Actually t be honest, I thought they were almost cheap. I pay more for the modern tires on my Trans Am.

[28 Chrysler]

As asked what the "S3" stood for, it was some of the first synthetic tires. These were crap from the start. A lot were taken off cars and pick ups when fairly new and put on farm trailers.

[mdsbob]

David is correct~~~

Winthrop Rockefeller the grandson of John D., and brother of Nelson, indeed did start a car museum.

This information is correct.

In fact he bought the collections of several early collectors as the starting basis of his museum. The James Melton collection was but one collection that he bought. Rockefeller did in fact start an early antique tire production business from his museum's basement !

Not entirely correct: The museum (Museum of Automobiles) that Rockefeller built was not built because he needed a place to house his collection. In fact as the museum was conceived and planned he had no collection. All of the cars had to be purchased to stock the museum. The museum came to be as a result of Winthrop being appointed, by then governor Orval Faubus, as the chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission (AIDC) that was later changed to Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC). As part of the many facets of his involvement in increasing industry, jobs, etc. in the state of Arkansas, the Museum of Automobiles was conceived as one of the tools to increase tourism in the state of Arkansas. Winthrop was a man of considerable means and this was a venture that he conceived and funded on his on.

In fact he bought the collections of several early collectors as the starting basis of his museum. The James Melton collection was but one collection that he bought.

Rockefeller did in fact start an early antique tire production business from his museum's basement !

Not entirely correct: He was offered the Melton collection very early in its dispersal when the collection was near the 100 count but declined to purchase the collection. As no buyers were found for the complete collection, dispersal was started and cars were sold off in single/multiple lots. After the collection had dwindled to approximately 40 cars Rockefeller did buy the remaining cars. After the completion of the transaction Rockefeller was informed several of the cars had IRS leans on them and in addition to paying Melton for the cars he had to also pay the IRS leans. The Melton collection was the only collection purchased of any significant numbers.<O:p</O:p

An event was held at the museum as part of the “ceremonial transferring of the collection” and James Melton came and I believe performed at the dinner/banquet.

James Melton died less that a year after this if I have my dates correct.

Dad once told me that Winthrop in fact lost money on every tire that he made and sold~~~ And he really did not care as he produced tires for the love of the Antique car hobby !

Not entirely correct: The tire venture was a separate entity under the museum umbrella and was set up as a non-profit. The intent was the profits from the tires would be donated to the Arkansas education and as an on going concern provide additional funding for public schools in the State of Arkansas. While it is true that he lost money on each tire it is quite untrue that he did not care. With no profits, there were no profits to donate to public education, at least from this venture.

He was a true pioneer in the Antique car hobby movement .

Not entirely correct: The significance and contribution by building the Museum of Automobiles should receive nothing but glowing accolades; Winthrop really was not a “car guy”. The museum was a product of an attempt to build tourism in the state of Arkansas. Even though Arkansas was his adopted home it would be difficult to find a single individual who did more to promote and improve the state than he did.

Edited January 12, 2011 by mdsbob (see edit history)

[Guest Silverghost]

mdsbob:

Thank's for setting the record straight here~~~

Most of the information i posted early in this thread were from my memory of talks that I had with my late Father over these many years.

I am quite sure if my Father were still with us he would have been able to provide much more accurate information on Winthrop Rockefeller's Museum operations as you have just done for us !

James Melton's career & health took a turn for the worse & he decided to re-locate his collection to Florida for health reasons.

His style of music was no longer in vogue~~~

Rock-and-Roll was now here to stay~~~

Melton had also spent tons of cash on his old car hobby & lifestyle.

He had thought that his career would go on forever~~~

Sadly this was not the case !

This move put him under much more financial & health stress and sadly as you stated he passed-away at a very young age shortly after just establishing his new Florida museum !

My Father was great friends with James Melton~~~

Sadly~~~

I never met him personally .

Edited January 12, 2011 by Silverghost (see edit history)

[1937hd45]

Were there any catalogs or early brochures on the Winthrop Rockefeller collection? I've always enjoyed tracing the cars in early collections. For the most part the truely great cars that were in the Melton and Clark collections have stayed in great collections of second and third generation collectors. When Melton moved the collection from Norwalk, Ct. to Florida there was an auction of extra cars. A friend that was there told me that at the end cars were sold in lots of of 2-3 cars, pre 1905 could be had for $500. Were is the 1907 Rolls Royce that was James Meltons favorite car?