Radial Tires and Wire Wheels

Old Redneck

Old Redneck

Well-known member
When you have Wire Wheels on 56 T-Bird you must have inter tubes because the wire wheels will leak air. Any of you have wire wheels with Radial tires? Do you have inter tubes. I though that was a no no with radial tires?
 
In the early 70's when I had a gas station job there used to be special inner tubes rated for radial tires, to take the extra heat in the sidewall area so they wouldn't fail. (blow out)
Lots of folks run radial tires & wire wheels on their Birds, I'll assume it's still true. (since I've never owned wire wheels)
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Most wire wheels require tubes - there are special tubes for radials as mentioned. When installing tubes in a wire wheel, use lots of baby powder in order to provide slippage when installing (nothing get pinched)
 
When I bought my bird in 1999, it had a set of later model wires, 15 inch, and Coker radials in the near stock replacement size, with tubes. I'm pretty sure they're KH's, similar to,what came on the bullet birds some years later. They didn't go a lot of miles, but the tires were aged out when I changed the whole set up in 2011. No problems, put air in once a year in the spring.

I don't understand the whole story, but apparently it something about the location of the spokes in the rim that requires tubes. There's other wire wheels that don't.

With new tires and tubes I'd run them again with no worries.
 
Old Redneck said:
When you have Wire Wheels on 56 T-Bird you must have inter tubes because the wire wheels will leak air. Any of you have wire wheels with Radial tires? Do you have inter tubes. I though that was a no no with radial tires?
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I've got Raidal whitewalls on my 57 birds Kelsey Hayes wire-wheels, have not had any issues between purchase on 2009 and commencement of full resto in mid 2014.
 
I have True Spoke wire wheels on my car with inner tubes, haven't had any problems yet. They have been on less than a year maybe 100 miles. Al
 
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