I have never seen this before.

[plymouthcranbrook]

I was driving down US41 on my way home this morning when I saw a midsize 4 door sedan pulling over to the median a little ways ahead of me. As I watched I saw something rolling along behind the car that I at first thought was a wheel and tire. As I got closer I realized it was a complete tire tread still in one piece rolling after the car.  It rolled past the car and as I drove by I could see that the right rear tire was smaller than the right front.  I wished I had had a way to film that as I have never seen that happen before.  I have seen retreads separate but never like that. As I drove by a woman was getting out of the drivers side and heading toward the now  stopped tread. Strange...

[Dan Hiebert]

Strange indeed. I have seen retreads on semis separate (never in one piece), and I've found full treads like that on the side of the highway, but have never actually seen it happen to a car tire.  I have never bought a retread or used tire for any of my autos to risk experiencing it.  One of those sage advice things handed down by my kin...and quite a few were penny pinchers.  

[Los_Control]

Years ago when I was retreading truck tires, the government did a study on tire treads left on the side of the roads .... was a big expense to pick them up and dispose ... they wanted to know who was responsible.

And it makes sense there are more virgin tires on the highway then retreads, the study concluded that there were more virgin tires being picked up then retreaded tires.

2 hours ago, plymouthcranbrook said:

As I got closer I realized it was a complete tire tread still in one piece rolling after the car.

I have never seen this either, a possible way is if the driver was driving the tire low on air, and the rubber heated up on the sidewalls and disintegrated, and tread miraculously stayed together.

 

Same thing with a semi, driver wakes up in the morning, all rested, fed, fueled and heads to the freeway and picks up a nail on the way .... 3 hours later on the freeway the tire comes apart.

Does not matter if virgin or retread.

 

I have had one of my trailer tire/wheel pass me on the freeway before 

I was only driving 35 mph with a 1961 dodge 1 ton flatbed, and a 10'x50' mobile home. slant 6/4spd pulled it great. Just to much weight and front end floated at 40 mph.

 

[Sniper]

One of my customers, Bandag, is a retreading place.  I talked to them about pass car retreads, basically mentioned that I don't remember the last time I saw one for sale.  What he told me was that with today's highway speeds and the just enough and no extra design of pass car tires there was no money in doing them because decent carcasses were rare.  So they only do truck tires anymore as those are still reasonable to do. 

[Los_Control]

29 minutes ago, Sniper said:

One of my customers, Bandag, is a retreading place.  I talked to them about pass car retreads, basically mentioned that I don't remember the last time I saw one for sale.  What he told me was that with today's highway speeds and the just enough and no extra design of pass car tires there was no money in doing them because decent carcasses were rare.  So they only do truck tires anymore as those are still reasonable to do. 

That is all true from what I remember.

Back in the day, we ran the bias ply tires and the rubber quality was so poor, you would get 10k-15k miles from them before worn thin. And it made sense to retread these.

With the quality of rubber today, for example tires on my truck are  so called 70k mile tires ... by the time they wear out, and could be casing failure not low tread ... stick a fork in them.

 

Same time, you get decent 16" or larger 10 ply truck tires on delivery vans or work pickups in town that get a zillion miles a year on them, it can be worth retreading the rear tires.

You take a quality Michelin 11-R-24.5 semi tire, they are getting more then 100k miles on them from the virgin casing, then retread them twice, they are getting between 400k-500k miles from the casing. They simply fail if you retread them a 3rd time from old age. Other tire brands have different issues and mileage depending on condition.

[plymouthcranbrook]

The last time I used a retread tire was in 1979 on a Plymouth Arrow pickup. Snow tires on the rear.  No trouble in the time I had it but that was then.

[Ulu]

I remember thst from the 1960’s that Bandag was famous for their cold process retreading, but I do not know how they do it nowadays.

 

Back in the old days they were the only ones that did cold process retreading.

 

Because of this you could do a Bandag retread more than once, as it did not unduly age a used carcass by overheating it.

 

It probably costs as much to retread a truck tire nowadays, as it is to buy a brand new passenger car tire of modest size.

 

My experience with retreaded tires in the early 70s was uniformly bad.

 

I would try to buy a matching pair but one of the carcasses would always turn out to be defective. This happened on my very first car. I was only 17.

 

Dad told me after he drove the car it was the most out of balance tire he had ever seen. The shop put several ounces of weight on both sides of the rim and I drove it from South Dakota to Utah before it started to come apart and I had to buy another tire.

 

I remember friends telling me that their car started shaking in the morning on the way to work, and they have no idea why because it was smooth the day before.

 

Cheap retread tires were delaminating right where the cap meets the sidewall. This would cause the tire to bulge and wobble. 
 

I think this was a big problem across the country back then. Tires were starting to go twice as far and it was harder to get a good retread.

 

 

[kencombs]

15 hours ago, Ulu said:

I remember thst from the 1960’s that Bandag was famous for their cold process retreading, but I do not know how they do it nowadays.

 

Back in the old days they were the only ones that did cold process retreading.

 

Because of this you could do a Bandag retread more than once, as it did not unduly age a used carcass by overheating it.

 

It probably costs as much to retread a truck tire nowadays, as it is to buy a brand new passenger car tire of modest size.

 

My experience with retreaded tires in the early 70s was uniformly bad.

 

I would try to buy a matching pair but one of the carcasses would always turn out to be defective. This happened on my very first car. I was only 17.

 

Dad told me after he drove the car it was the most out of balance tire he had ever seen. The shop put several ounces of weight on both sides of the rim and I drove it from South Dakota to Utah before it started to come apart and I had to buy another tire.

 

I remember friends telling me that their car started shaking in the morning on the way to work, and they have no idea why because it was smooth the day before.

 

Cheap retread tires were delaminating right where the cap meets the sidewall. This would cause the tire to bulge and wobble. 
 

I think this was a big problem across the country back then. Tires were starting to go twice as far and it was harder to get a good retread.

 

 

Red part was a real problem with early Nylon cord bias ply tires.  Flat spot when setting overnight, especially in cold weather.  Rayon was not a strong but didn't do that nearly as bad.

 

Retreads where really a crap shoot.  I worked in a station in 59-60, and my Dad owned one in the very early 60s, before getting into the salvage business.  We sold recaps, some were really good, others wouldn't last a month.  Once we settled on one source they worked out OK for our customers.  It seemed to depend on the care taking in buffing off the old tread evenly, laying the new rubber correctly and then curing at the right temp.  All the sources used the same material but got very different results.

 

On a related topic:  Bandag used to sponsor a truck at Bonneville.    We had a local recapper that did almost exclusively truck tires.  He had the Bandag B'ville truck in town for a demo.  It had a single rear axle with single tires.  But they were 'super singles', retread of course.  The engine was a V8 diesel with a turbo on both banks.  It made a demostration run on a closed city street.  About a quarter mile in total.  Rear tires smokin' and leaving BIG black marks for two city blocks.  Funny sound to me as I was used to hot drag cars.  This thing didn't sound like it even hit 2500RPM, but massive torque!

[Los_Control]

34 minutes ago, kencombs said:

On a related topic:  Bandag used to sponsor a truck at Bonneville.    We had a local recapper that did almost exclusively truck tires.  He had the Bandag B'ville truck in town for a demo.  It had a single rear axle with single tires.  But they were 'super singles', retread of course.  The engine was a V8 diesel with a turbo on both banks.  It made a demostration run on a closed city street.  About a quarter mile in total.  Rear tires smokin' and leaving BIG black marks for two city blocks.  Funny sound to me as I was used to hot drag cars.  This thing didn't sound like it even hit 2500RPM, but massive torque!

I remember that truck as it came to a annual party we threw for customers/employees bbq beer soda the whole works with the street closed off and truck doing burn outs off and on all day.

In another town at another party, I heard the driver had a bit too much to drink and almost killed someone, they put a stop to it for good.

 

The cold process is king of retreads. Is much more advanced. They make the tread separate where they can apply much higher heat and pressure to the tread, this allows them to get 100k miles from the retread on a truck tire. And the tread is uniform weight per foot and you get no balance problems from them, they are cured to the casing at 210 degrees, which is cool enough to not damage the casing. Also the curing chambers were pressurized and the tires were mounted on wheels with tubes aired up, so they got a lot of needed pressure, but only 15 pounds difference between inside and outside of tire so not to stressful on the casing.

 

Hot caps was the original retread, There was a large complicated machine that you had to set the tire size, width, radius ... lots of knobs to fiddle with. Then you start the machine and feed raw rubber into it as tire spins around and machine heats the raw rubber and applies it to the tire in thin heated strips. Pretty automatic, but if you get one knob setting wrong, it will apply to much rubber in a wrong area and get heavy spots. Then the tire is set into a clam shell mold, raise the top of the mold, set the tire in the bottom and get it exactly centered, you get it off 1/4" and now you have another heavy spot as the rubber flows to the least resistance,  And of course you have 10 other molds around you curing tires at 240 degrees and the mold you are changing is still 200 degrees ... dirty nasty job. I can only remember 1 hot capper over the years that did not have a pint of booze stashed in his work station, that one liked wine.

Even when I was working in a union Bandag shop in the late 80's, there was a hot cap side of the shop, ol Joe he always had a smile on his red face and visited the bathroom a lot.

Everybody including management knew he was hitting the bottle. But they could not replace him or get anyone to take his place if he called in sick or went on vacation.

 

Today I would be surprised if any hot cap shops are still open.

 

[Ulu]

I do remember seeing the Bandag truck in the magazines.

I don't remember super singles. Are those like concrete truck tires?

I remember Duplex tires. You had to buy their Duplex wheels, because they were 1/2" bigger than standard wheel sizes.

 

I've mounted quite a variety of tires when I was young. Tires from a 8hp lawnmower to tires for heavy trucks and tractors.

Everybody was scared of split rims. I never saw a problem with them once, but I always inspected them for damage and cleaned the rims.

Most shops were loathe to spend one minute cleaning a rim.

 

Because of this I hate to have other people mount my tires. I don't let anyone else mount my bike tires.

I'm too paranoid. I've had the 1500 Nomad for 16 years, and nobody else has laid a wrench on it, once it was assembled.

I've owned 7 motorcycles, and not one was ever wrenched on by others.

 

Motoparanoia...I got it.

 

 

 

[RNR1957NYer]

Back to new tires losing their tread, twenty years ago Ford had a huge recall of the Firestone ATX tires they were putting on trucks.

[kencombs]

10 hours ago, RNR1957NYer said:

Back to new tires losing their tread, twenty years ago Ford had a huge recall of the Firestone ATX tires they were putting on trucks.

I had an Expedition that had those, 2000 model.  Got the recall and scheduled the replacement, kept rescheduling because they couldn't get the Michelins I wanted.  Finally I had to settle for the Ford selected replacement. 

 

Not really the tire's fault, Ford has speced a pressure range far too low for the tire in the interest of a soft ride. So they overheated under some load and speed conditions. Soon after the recall the suspension was redesigned and pressure recommendation raised.

 

Same SUV, was a victim of the infamous fire.  Sitting in the street in front of our antique store and started burning.  Whoever thought an unfused  wire to the cruise control was a good idea?  Right under the plastic bake fluid reservoir too.  That melted and really fed the flames!  I hit it with the fire extinguisher, but it was totaled.

[kencombs]

11 hours ago, Ulu said:

I do remember seeing the Bandag truck in the magazines.

I don't remember super singles. Are those like concrete truck tires?

Yes, like the ones on concrete trucks.  Lower weight, less drag and better flotation than duals.

11 hours ago, Ulu said:

I remember Duplex tires. You had to buy their Duplex wheels, because they were 1/2" bigger than standard wheel sizes.

 

I've mounted quite a variety of tires when I was young. Tires from a 8hp lawnmower to tires for heavy trucks and tractors.

Everybody was scared of split rims. I never saw a problem with them once, but I always inspected them for damage and cleaned the rims.

Most shops were loathe to spend one minute cleaning a rim.

Same here.  I'm not scared of lock ring wheels, but do take much caution with cleaning and using some method to protect myself when airing.  Cage, put the wheel on the truck with the ring facing inward before airing or even wrapping a chain around the wheel and tire, through the holes.  I never had an issue but an experienced service station operator in my home town was killed by one.  He'd probably done more than I'll ever see, but missed something just one time.

 

The real 'split rim', two piece widow makers, I'll never touch.

11 hours ago, Ulu said:

 

Because of this I hate to have other people mount my tires. I don't let anyone else mount my bike tires.

I'm too paranoid. I've had the 1500 Nomad for 16 years, and nobody else has laid a wrench on it, once it was assembled.

I've owned 7 motorcycles, and not one was ever wrenched on by others.

 

Motoparanoia...I got it.

 

 

 

 

[Ulu]

20 hours ago, kencombs said:

 . . .real problem with early Nylon cord bias ply tires.  Flat spot when setting overnight, especially in cold weather.  Rayon was not a strong but didn't do that nearly as bad. . . 

 

I learned to drive in No. Minnesota in the 60's and it was a constant thing. Every morning you drove slow until the tires warmed up. When it was well below zero, you could hear the car creak as you drove slowly off, because all the body mount rubbers were no longer soft.

[plymouthcranbrook]

The only place I ever worked at that did split rims had a steel cage that they went into for inflation.  Every once in a while you would hear a loud bang and knew one had slipped.

[MackTheFinger]

4 hours ago, kencombs said:

I never had an issue but an experienced service station operator in my home town was killed by one

 

I worked in a service station when I was a teenager and worked on split ring wheels a few times. Those things were a lot of fun to beat on during the summer!  The lift in the station was basically a couple of steel I-beams on a ram, just about perfect for covering a tractor-trailer wheel. Wesley, the guy I worked for; taught me to always put split ring wheels under the lift before airing them up. I never had one come loose but there was a guy near here who got his head busted open working on one. The truck stop he worked at had a cage but they said this guy wouldn't use it. He lived a couple of days afterward. 

[Ulu]

We had a cage of course, and a clip-on chuck with a hose so you could stand back.

This was a big rental lot, so trucks and trailers came back with flats all the time. All kinds of rental equipment had 16" split rims.

In those days most of it had tubes as well. I patched a lotta tubes.

I was often putting on the 4th patch on a tube only a year old.

Construction sties were murder on tires.

[Booger]

jesus christ I can hear you ol fellas wid yer twang! Ran retreads alla time.freeway speeds from Canada to Mexico