[SCG] 1966-'69 tires

[Brent Covey]

I'd go $125 pretty easy for repro concours Laredo tires- at least three sets of 5! Firestones, maybe one set while I wait for a proper Corvair tire.

In 1965 most CDN jobs had Laredos, in 1966 most Canadian assembled Corvairs I've seen had Goodrich Silvertowns from the factory- quite a sinilar looking tire to the Laredo, but with a finely serrated edge on the outer sidewall. 

Spring 1965 on the whitewalls on the '65's up here became ~5/8", down from about ~7/8" earlier in the year, for a '1966' style tire but still 6.50-13 in size.

I feel the Laredo is the tire that needs reproduction, its by far the tire most Corvairs had and even the promo models have what appears to be Laredos- I would be OK with the Firestones but the dont make my socks roll up and down. The Laredo is a pretty decent tire by bias ply OEM tire standards, less sensitive to tramlining etc than most and dont squeal in the corners, and  its a very 'nice looking' tire.

Personally, I dont care for the way radial ply tires make a Corvair feel, they're kind of mushy but do mask alignment issues and road irregularities much much better. The old bias-belted tires from around 1971 were pretty good, they were about 80% as good as radials at masking road ridges etc and still had the snap and response of the bias ply and the super soft ride the stock tires had. F41 suspension suits the radials much better than the softer standard suspension, if a person is expecting to use radials from now on, you might consider changing the springs to the F41 type if replacement is neccesary sometime.

Brent Covey
Vancouver


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