<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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