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Bruce Wrenn
05-20-2018, 8:31 PM
As a kid I remember car tires seldom lasting more than 10,000 miles. Recaps were very common, especially for "snow tires. Then the glass belted tires came out and suddenly tire mileage jumped up to around 20K miles. Next came the radial tires and mileage jumped to around 40K. Bandag came out with a recap for radials that promised 60K of wear. Had a friend who had a Ford Bronco with Goodyear Poly steels that went 40K, then Bandag recaps for another 60+K. Tires still met minimums when he sold it. Today many tires carry a 70K warranty. Trucks used to shed recaps regularly due to under inflation. Since most trucks now have pressure sensors, you don't see as many "alligators" lying in the road. Most likely the fastest you have ever been was on a set of recaps. Care to guess as to where?

Tom M King
05-20-2018, 9:16 PM
Good riddance to bias ply tires, and drum brakes.

Art Mann
05-20-2018, 11:04 PM
I am not sure I get the point of your question at the end of the post but the fastest I have ever been was on radial motorcycle tires. 150+ mph on I-65 between Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama. I don't think bias ply tires would even hold together at that speed. Recaps certainly wouldn't. I consider them dangerous regardless of speed. "Alligators" can kill motorcycle riders.

In general, the higher the mileage rating on a tire, the lower the traction. I recently bought new tires for my truck even though the OEM tires still looked good. The wet weather traction was so poor that i considered them too risky to continue to use.

Chris Parks
05-20-2018, 11:34 PM
Aircraft tyres.

Ken Fitzgerald
05-20-2018, 11:45 PM
I can remember in 1967 buying a brand new set of 5 Firestone 500's bias ply tires. 12 months later, 11,000 miles later bald as a baby's behind. I suddenly developed a tremendous shaking and found knots on the inside sidewalls of both the front tires. The local Firestone dealer told me the best he could do was a $50 discount on a new set of Firestone 500's. I never bought another Firestone tire.

In 1970 while stationed at NAS Meridian, MS I was reading a story in Scientific American IIRC about steel belted radial tires and their advantages. I was driving a 1 year old Pontiac T-37 that needed it's original bias ply tires replaced. The local Sears store was having a sale on Sears Roadhandlers (made by Michelan). I haven't driven anything but steel belted radials since that time. I always get more mileage than the tire is warranted to last.

I don't miss bias ply tires.

Wayne Lomman
05-21-2018, 5:38 AM
70k miles on a set of tyres? Not in the bush. 20k is a great result. They are a major expense for me. But then I don't pay much for services as they don't exist. Cheers

Mike Cutler
05-21-2018, 8:52 AM
My Uncle used to own Mohawk Tires in Milpitas California. They made recaps there. As a kid it was great fun to play in the mountains of tires and watch them make recaps. It was quite the process.

Tires are better today. Much more selection and you can tailor the tire to suit your need.
Bias and glass belted tires were pretty awful.

If your question is how fast a person has gone, on a tire,or a recapped tire, it would probably be a an airplane going down the runway, or landing. For a select few, it would be at Bonneville. ;)

Perry Hilbert Jr
05-21-2018, 9:29 AM
The tires on my Mrs. Mirage with steel belts are only good for about 20k miles. Been through three sets. Not uneven wear or anything, just little tires. Smaller diameter tires run higher revolutions for distance traveled and wear faster. When I was in college and money was tight, a friend of my Dad's had a service station. I called him and told him I did not have much money and what tires did he have cheap for my 1970 Merc Montego. He sold me a set of 4 ply Atlas tires for $18.00 each. I bought that car with 80 thousand miles on it and gave it to my sister when it had 170,000 miles and those Atlas tires lasted at least 40 thou of those miles. with several trips to Florida A set of 4 steel belt radials for Mrs. car run over $500 and don't last for crap.

Rich Engelhardt
05-21-2018, 9:33 AM
My buddy in high school, Phil, bought a 1941 Chrysler Windsor (w/Fluid Drive) for $250 back in 1969.
It came with a whole trunk full of tires & rims - which in the 41 Chrysler amount to a really big pile of tires! That trunk would hold a couple Mini Coopers....

The car got more miles per gallon of gas than it got miles to the tire! We were forever changing tires in that car.
Drive 50 miles, change the tire - take the flat to a garage and have the tube patched - repeat the next 50 to 100 miles.

IMH-Experience, the introduction of tubeless tires was as profound an improvement, if not more so, than the steel belted radial.


My personal best?
I had a 1990 Nissan Sentra. It was solid black, had a 5 speed stick and not one single option - - not one - nothing. It got 49 miles per gal the first week I had it & 120,000 miles later, when I traded it, it still got 49 miles per gal.
I piled miles on that car at the rate of 800 to 1200 per week.
At 13,000 miles - just out of warranty - the back tires went bald. Front ones were ok....pretty odd for a front wheel drive...

I took the car to Firestone - they had a special going on $10 for an oil and filter change if you bough a book of 10 oil changes......I bought two or three books since I changed oil every third week :D.
I also bought - a lifetime 4 wheel alignment.
I replaced all four tires --then put over 100,000 miles on those tires. It was sort of a running joke at the Firestone store.

Every three weeks, I got an oil change, rotated the tires & got a 4 wheel alignment. I also seldom drove that car on anything but freeways and other well maintained roads.

Jim Becker
05-21-2018, 10:12 AM
While many tires carry long 60-70K miles warranties...the amount of "hoop jumping" one must go through to actually make a claim is often substantial. And with so many folks buying tires remotely for local install, costly, too, because some brands require return of the tires to the original source. Most folks do not get to the "warranty" miles expectation, either. My previous set of Pirelli Scorpion Verde Plus were wearing much faster than expectations and the only reason I didn't try to pursue a claim was because two became inadvertently damaged by the actions of an incompetent alignment. (done twice...and I no longer do business with the firm, either) The tires I have on my JGC now, however, are wearing like iron. (Michelin Defender LTX) and with 20K miles on them, they still look (and measure) like brand new.

I don't think we see too many recaps on passenger/LT tires anymore. That seems to be mostly a trucking thing and even there, it's mostly on the trailers. At least in my observation which could be flawed.

Peter Kelly
05-21-2018, 10:20 AM
I had an earlier iteration of that same Nissan Sentra. Weighed almost nothing, had very narrow tires and got amazing mileage (58 / highway). Great car until the right front CV joint decided to randomly fail one night sending me on three wheels across two lanes into oncoming traffic at 60 mph.

The Nissan was in a thousand pieces when I finally stopped moving. Lucky that everyone involved managed to have gotten through that w/o serious injuries.

Mike Cutler
05-21-2018, 10:38 AM
The tires on my Mrs. Mirage with steel belts are only good for about 20k miles. Been through three sets. Not uneven wear or anything, just little tires. Smaller diameter tires run higher revolutions for distance traveled and wear faster. When I was in college and money was tight, a friend of my Dad's had a service station. I called him and told him I did not have much money and what tires did he have cheap for my 1970 Merc Montego. He sold me a set of 4 ply Atlas tires for $18.00 each. I bought that car with 80 thousand miles on it and gave it to my sister when it had 170,000 miles and those Atlas tires lasted at least 40 thou of those miles. with several trips to Florida A set of 4 steel belt radials for Mrs. car run over $500 and don't last for crap.

Perry

Look at changing the composition of the tires. You're probably running a very soft, sticky, tire.
My Mini Cooper's all came with VR rated run flat tires. These are about $250.00 -$300.00 apiece and they only get about 20K-25K. miles. Incredible performance in a turn, but a harsh ride. Once they wore out, I didn't replace with the same tire
I don't track my cars, and I'm a little bit older now,so I don't do the stop light to stop light thing any longer, so their tires are now a higher mileage based, performance, non run flat tire. I've been using Hankook's and Continentals the past 5 years, or so on both.

Carlos Alvarez
05-21-2018, 12:22 PM
I recently did the first tire changes on my Jeep. I was shocked to have clocked in 50k miles on off-road tires (Goodyear MT/R 35x12.50-15) that have indeed spent a lot of time off road being abused. Then a bunch of city/highway driving. I do keep the pressure exactly where I want it, and rotate/balance every 5k-6k miles.

The wife's car on the other hand...rear tires good for 18k, and fronts a little over 30k. But she doesn't drive much. Still, I did some research and found a Chinese brand called Nankang that had great reviews for sports car tires. The price was stunning. I put them on the front when they were needed, and they are way better than the Michelin Pilot Supersports the car came with. Quieter, and more stable in corners (the Pilots had a wandering quality to them when pushed, these do not). They aren't run-flats, but this car never leaves our metro area and we'll just have it towed if needed. We had stopped using the run-flats anyway on the last rear tire change. Now I need to get the rears installed. These stupid Michelins are showing cracks at just over two years old. Michelin car tires seem to really hate our heat/sun level, and I've seen lots of issues with them (not truck tires).

Bruce Wrenn
05-21-2018, 10:05 PM
I don't think we see too many recaps on passenger/LT tires anymore. That seems to be mostly a trucking thing and even there, it's mostly on the trailers. At least in my observation which could be flawed.I don't think anyone recaps car / light truck tires any more. UPS runs caps on rear on almost all their trucks. As for big rigs, you can't run recaps on front axle, but can run them on tandem and trailer, often netting over 200K out of original tread and one cap. Landing gear (not nose wheels ) can be recapped several times. Most of the wear occurs upon impact with runway. So much that airports have to pressure wash landing areas regularly to remove rubber coating. So fastest is either landing, or taking off in an aircraft. Recently junked my 1990 Honda Civic. Tires on rear had 103K on them. 1994 Ford Areostar is close to 50K miles on a set. Mileage would be better, except some of Ford's lifetime front end parts slowly gave up the ghost. But at 200K, what can you expect. Both sets of tires were Hankook's, but the set on my wife's SUV, also Hankook's) were a piece of trash from the get go.

Carlos Alvarez
05-21-2018, 10:13 PM
I've had this vision of putting some sort of wind vanes on the landing gear to get the tires spinning before they touch the ground. I would hope someone has tried that and it didn't work, rather than just overlooking the possibility.

John C Cox
05-21-2018, 10:27 PM
One of Dad's college buddies went to work for a now-long defunct tire company.... He ended up in charge of the testing of tires when the previous fellow quit or was shown the door...

His story went that there was no documentation of what to do... So being a good engineer - he found a copy of the Relevant ASTM/ANSI manual or whatever government standard was in place at the time and started testing them according to what it said to do... Much to his chagrin - they all failed.. So he reported his findings through the proper channels and made inquiry within the company... Found some old timer who had done it before - and they retested.. And they all failed... This did not go unnoticed within the company - but for whatever reason, he was unable to get the labor unions and management to agree on making the tires to specification so they would pass... Something about bonus structures and piece rate incentives or whatever... This is probably mid 1960's here we are talking about...

Shortly after - he left..... Ending his career in the tire industry... A few years later the company went belly up after running afoul of some sort of government authorities for their tires failing too many required tests... And so it goes...

Bruce Wrenn
05-23-2018, 9:34 PM
I've had this vision of putting some sort of wind vanes on the landing gear to get the tires spinning before they touch the ground. I would hope someone has tried that and it didn't work, rather than just overlooking the possibility.The amount of energy to get tires rotating at landing is great. Without this use of energy, landing (stopping) distance would be much greater.