Re-Caps?

[Ulu]

I

 

just realized I still own a "spare" one, from 1974. 2-stripe whitewall L78-15 4-ply, recapped and never run.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Ulu

[DonaldSmith]

Is it like "The Old Man's" tires, in the Christmas Story movie, round and were once rubber? 

[Sniper]

It's a rarity these days.  One of my customer's is Bandag, I think Los Control worked for them some time back.  Anyway, they recap truck tires.  Asked about pass car tires and was told that with the high speeds nowadays and the way they make new tires it's not feasible to do pass car tires.  Truck tires are still built stout enough that they can be safety retreaded.

[Ulu]

When tires got 10k~15k it wasn't too bad, but now that they run up to 5 times that, you don't want to deal with the fatigue factor.

 

 

 

[Ulu]

7 hours ago, DonaldSmith said:

Is it like "The Old Man's" tires, in the Christmas Story movie, round and were once rubber? 

I never saw the whole thing. I do remember shooting at a steel pole as a kid. It didn't ricochet though. I missed the pole and put a hole in the neighbor's sliding glass door.

 

I have no idea what that cost my dad. ?

Edited April 19, 2022 by Ulu

[Sniper]

24 minutes ago, Ulu said:

I have no idea what that cost my dad. ?

 

Ah, but what price did you pay?

[Ulu]

3 hours ago, Sniper said:

 

Ah, but what price did you pay?

Amazingly, nothing.  I told my parents right off that I'd screwed up. They must have been impressed that I told them before the neighbors did.

 

The neighbor actually never even noticed the little hole in her glass, until we went to tell her.

 

I got some shooting advice about line-of-fire or some such. That was about it.

[Sniper]

Well, that was a good experience.  It took me a while as a a kid to realize that just fessing up to begin with was the path of less pain, lol.  Actually, I don't think I ever got whomped for doing it like you did.  Oh, I would have had to pay the old man back but if I lied or tried to hide it, I got whomped and had to pay it back.

[Los_Control]

13 hours ago, Ulu said:

When tires got 10k~15k it wasn't too bad, but now that they run up to 5 times that, you don't want to deal with the fatigue factor.

 

 

 

That is 100% correct. I remember a customer ran Michelin LP 24.5 tires on all their trucks/trailers. Great tire, run the virgin tire & then 2 retreads.

We would see them come back for a 3rd retread ... We put them straight into the junk pile. We know the casing already has close to 1/2 a million miles on them. They will fail from fatigue before they run out a 3rd retread.

Then everybody is pissed off. The driver is broke down on the side of the road and worried about his schedule.

When the tire blew, wiped out the trailer fender or tail lights, cost the company money to replace them.

The retread shop looks bad because they are the ones that ......Just bad business all the way around.

 

A passenger tire is basically the same thing. Yes we did have the ability & equipment to retread a car tire .... But they already have ran out their usefulness, We were not going to put our reputation on them to last.

Would be minimal if any savings in cost for us to retread them or just buy new tires.

[Ulu]

I remember having a retread on the first car I ever owned and not understanding why the thing was hopping all over on the freeway.

 

I exchanged it for a much better retread at some dinky car shop in the sticks of South Dakota.

[Los_Control]

53 minutes ago, Ulu said:

I remember having a retread on the first car I ever owned and not understanding why the thing was hopping all over on the freeway.

That might have been Joe. At that time we were using what we called "Hot Caps"

 

Was a large machine where it was fed with raw rubber off of a large reel.

 

Depending on the tire & if it was going to be a snow tire or a car tire, how much raw rubber was applied to the tire.

The machine operator really needed to pay attention here. This was in the 1980's .... not really computer controlled, more manual interaction and punch cards.

 

They could produce a tire cheaply that would get 15k miles on them and add walnut shells to make more attractive snow tires.

 

At this era, I just never met a "Hot Capper" that was never drunk on the Job.

 

Ol Joe was a Teamster union member for over 30 years. He took care of the Hot cap side and I swear he was Drunk every day for the 5 years I worked there.

 

I also worked at other shops, exact same thing ... Just a real suck arse job and needed a drunk to take it on.

 

[Ulu]

I have been to a hot cap shop in Glendale Arizona back in 1963. I saw exactly what you described.

 

What a filthy business that was.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Ulu

[Eneto-55]

I was working for a construction company here in Ohio back in the early mid 80's, and got a "tour" of the recapping operation when we were doing some repairs there.  The area where they ground down the cores was kinda' messy, but it didn't seem bad otherwise.