NOS "Redlines" were bringing $2000 a set in those days for old & possibly rotten show-only tires ! This was the very same thing Dad & his friends had done just decades before ! I remember myself trying to hunt down old style "red-line" muscle-car and Corvette tires in the late 70s-early 80s ! Many old original tire molds were found in Central & South America ! That's how the reproduction tire business all started. Later on several bigger car collectors themselves searched out old tire molds and equipment and started making new reproduction tires for the old car hobby ! Today re-capping with new tire tread is still done by the trucking and heavy road building equipment industry only in the USA. Re-capping the tread area of old tires was a big business in the USA until the mid-1970s when the only re-capping done after this time was for truck, heavy equipment & cheap winter snow tires. They would have these old tires re-capped with new tread. If you could not buy NEW tires from Sears or Wards you had to scrounge and hunt aggressivly for them at old tire dealers, and service stations, junkyards, barns, and garages!Įarly collectors would also buy old worn-out & bald tires if the sidewalls were still good. There was no such thing as Antique & Classic Reproduction tires in the very early days of our hobby until the late 50s-60s. The farmer was using old tires as a weeding ring around his new small tree saplings.ĭad stopped and made the farmer an offer he could not refuse on a number of almost new & rare Antique tire sizes that the farmer had used ! Many old tire sizes never went back into production after the war as there was little new demand for the Antique early tire sizes.Įarly Auto Collectors would often trade old usable tires among each other.ĭad would often tell the story of seeing a farmer planting a grove of Christmas Trees near his home. The war scrap drives and civillian use during the war depleated the existing stock of old auto tires sizes. Īs a result of the scrap drives many good old size tires from the teens, 20s & 30s were in fact scrapped & recycled !Īfter the war old Antique & Classic tire sizes were very scarce. New synthetic rubber blends were developed during WW II because of the short supply of natural tree rubber. Old tires were also a very big War Scrap Drive item as Japan had a strangle-hold on many natural rubber plantations ! There was a black market selling and stealing old & new tires & car batteries, gasoline etc during the WW II years !įolks would often take their car battery inside overnight~~~ĪLL New tire production was for the war effort for millitary use ! Many cars were put-up on blocks for storage for the duration of the war because of this shortage of Gasoline, lube oil, tires and a new working battery ! Gasoline & lube oil was also rationed based on a person's need ! The Navy supplied him with all the fuel, oil, and tires he needed !Īlmost everyone else could not buy ANY new tires, inner-tubes or a new car battery~~~ He had to drive to US Navy shipyards all up-and-down the US East Coast constantly. He was the Chief Electrical Engineer for the US Navy Yard in Philadelphia with 150 other engineers working directly under him. Tires were not being made for the general civillian population !Īll rubber and Nylon cord went to the war effort ! They were considered vital strategic materials.įolks were in fact riding on old bald tires with heavily patched inner-tubes.ĭad luckily got his new tires for his daily driver because he was involved in vital Navy war work building & designing Navy ships & submarines. If you tried to drive too far on them they would just powder away, split or blow-out !ĭuring WW II getting ANY tires & tubes at all, new or old, was a major problem ! Many of these old & NOS tires suffered from tire rubber rot and were good for show only. Dad had a big stack of old NOS & good usable old tires & tubes in my Grandmother's carriage house loft. Old size tires & inner- tubes were often traded among Antique auto collectors. He and his car collector friends would buy everything they found ! He & his car collecting friends would often stop at old tire dealers & service stations and ask if they had any old oddball obsolete size tires & inner- tubes in stock ? He stated that Sears Roebuck & Montgomery Ward and some others were still selling the more common older tire sizes for Ford Model "T" & "A" cars but many other rarer obsolete & oddball older Antique tire & inner-tube sizes were very hard, if not impossible to find indeed ! My late 92 y/o Father who started collecting Antique & Classic autos before WW II when asked what was the most difficult parts to find in the early days of the car collecting & restoration hobby would always respond with just one item~~~
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