found some neat vintage tires at the landfill (2 Viewers)

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swamp-thing

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So a month ago I was dropping off donations at our local landfill / recyle center and came by these two beauties on a pallet for the price of $5 each.

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Not dryrotted, clean & vintage in every way! Cooper Discoverer Radial SST and Kelly Springfield Safari A-T. They are 7.50R16LT.

Being the scavenger I am, I scooped them up without haste or hesitation. I run 16” tacoma steelies on my fj40 with some wheel spacers, mostly because at one point in time ( many miles ago) the setup was in good shape and the 15’s on my cruiser at the time were tired so I swapped the 16’s on.

Anyway back to the old school rubber…My thought was, take one of these cool old beauties and mount it for a spare mostly for looks and why not. Since my cruiser is just a townie I wasn’t super concerned about the size being exact match or the tire being 40 plus years old.

Today was the day, I gussied up my spare rim with fresh paint and slowly, painstakingly pryed the Kelly over the rim beads…. Needless to say the 16x7 wheel accepting a super narrow tire did not really go so well. The tire was too narrow to meet any of the ramps on the wheel to seat the bead. i youtubed the ether methods, the cheetah method, and the ratchet strap method to mount skinnies on fat wheels.

After probably 2 hours of fussin and cussin I finally, FINALLY got the Kelly to air up. Ratchet strap and soapy water for the win.

Anyway, I’m not sure the effort was actually worth it, but it’s on now and hanging on my spare tire carrier:

i call it a win.

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I wouldn't run old tires. The dry rot isn't always visible. They dry out without the rot.
My neighbor didn't think so and took off with a set of twenty year old tires that were stored in his garage. He made it about 120 miles
before a blow out. His spare made it less that one.
When we competed in the rock crawl events, It was very apparent, the difference between a brand new tire and last years unused tire.
The traction just wasn't the same.
 
If you want to make the antique fresh, I'd consider sandblasting the tire. I was really surprised what happened when wheeling in sand on something before I could afford tires. Don't ever run expired treads, they lost all of that new-tire-smell.

This thread will probably be quickly overlooked, but, why mess with a functional spare if you are not ditching the stock tire carrier? Most of the web has a spare tire so big that it makes a big blind spot in the rear view mirror. Patching a tire on the trail isn't that bad of an idea, and if you are always in a group, someone else already has something you can mount on your wheel with some irons and a soap. Maybe you want to retain a 15" or 16" OEM steelie on the spare carrier, with no intention of ever using the tire it is mounted to, and it is the stock 29x8 ish so you don't have to mount something to the frame/bumper to hold it.

Maybe a spare tire is just a dummy look for an on-board reserve of pressurized air? Plus, it gets you a spare steel wheel if you damage one on the trail. I'm not suggesting that anyone modify the function of their Cruiser, just entertain the idea.

I need to get the whitewall correctly showing on my spare, and I have a spare wheel laying around... Yours looks good.
 

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