<VV> Notes

Tony Underwood tonyu at roava.net
Tue Aug 15 11:53:14 EDT 2006


At 08:33 hours 08/14/2006, George Jones wrote:
>On 8/15/06, Tony Underwood <tonyu at roava.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>Group:
>
>...The tires are almost new, Goodyear radials, 185x80/13s...
>>
>>Almost is relative. Are they almost new, as in 200 miles, but 10 years
>old... or 2500 miles but 6 months old.

There's about 1800 miles on them.   The two on the front came from a 
vendor, sat in the shed for about 9 months before I put 'em on the 
car, and the two on the back came from a tire store off the rack last 
Fall.   I can check the date codes on 'em but they look "fresh", no 
glazed look as you'd see in an old tire that's been sitting in 
storage for a decade.


>  I'm sure you're aware that tire
>compounds get harder as they get older.


Oh yes...   and of course it's been my experience that the '60 4-door 
will generally use up tires via dryrotting and cracking before it 
ever actually wears them out.   This car has to be the easiest on 
tires of any vehicle I've owned, and it sees mostly around-own 
driving which is harder on tires.    The Michelins that were on it 
before were still "inspectable" and had decent tread left but the 
sidewalls were cracking and they also showed cracks between the 
tread.   I tossed them.   Likewise the Goodyears that were on the car 
before the Michelins, which I'd picked up used at a small tire store 
for cheap, were fairly fresh and had plenty of tread etc, had  been 
take-off trade-ins  for some fancy tires.    And, they were the right 
size.  :)   Still began cracking after about 6 years, as did the 
previous Goodyears that they replaced.

These Goodyears are the 4th set of tires on this car since I've owned 
it and I didn't actually wear out any of the previous tires.



>How's the car ride now? Thump, thump, thump?


No, I didn't flatspot anything, still rides OK.   And I can feel a 
single chunk of gravel on the roads if I run over it...  the car does 
tend to transmit road texture to the interior including anything that 
it runs over, even  small stuff.    It has good "road feedback", 
certainly lets you know the difference  between coarse and smooth 
pavement.   Of course if I were running "factory" tire pressures this 
would likely not be as evident.

Speaking of which:

Anybody else notice that Corvairs seem to give you lots of feedback 
from the road?     The steering wheel tends to be "live",  more so 
than front engine cars, likely because there's less mass up front to 
damp out vibrations from the road surface etc.



tony..      



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