VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Tires for my '32

I'm going to order new tires today (the ones on my car have less than 500 miles on them, but they are from 1989!), but am wondering -- do you take spoked wheels to a motorcycle shop for tire mounting service?

I doubt my usual tire buster places have the equipment to deal with those wheels!

You ordered new tubes as well? These wheels are not that hard to break down yourself. Unlike tubeless set-ups there is no bead in the rim. A pair of good tire irons and away you go.

I had my local tire dealer change the tires on my '33, they are the same as a '32. They had no problem doing it but said they could not spin balance them and no longer had an old bubble balancer.

Yep, new tubes and new hub protectors (or whatever that big rubber band around the hub is called), too.

I've read the book on how to install the tires (I know they used to do it on the side of the road!), so it must be fairly easy!

Still, it would be good to have them balanced.

I wonder why they couldn't spin balance them?

When I got my '32 it hadn't been driven but for a few miles since the previous owner had it "restored' but it came with 4 brand new wide whitewall tires which are as good now as when they were mounted.
The wheels were all balanced so there's some lead there.
I think I had it up to 60 briefly once, just because, but would never consider driving it that fast.
At any rate there was no tire vibration........or any other vibration as far as that goes.
You'll probably have to find a shop that's been around a long time or a hobbyist who might have a bubble balancer.

Jay, I think they would not fit on the balancer because of the way the wheels are made.

www.harborfright.com carries a bubble balancer for a reasonable price.

Ordered four new tires from Coker yesterday. Ka-ching!

Spin balancing only plays a factor when you get up over 50 mph from what I heard. Generally these cars don't go that fast anyway so it doesn't matter. At least not on mine...

I agree that bubble balancing is more than adequate for these cars. And it works even better with narrower wheels and tires. There is less mass across the width to be dynamically unbalanced.

I also agree that it is probably beyond the scope of most tire shops to figure out how to adapt your wheels to their spin balancer.

I have an older Harbor Freight bubble balancer we used for many years to balance all the tires for the Miata we raced. I use it for the tires for my '37 as well as my '95 Miata. The Chevy feels good at 65 and the Miata at 85 mph.

I had a set of wheels for my 32 put on a spin balancer to check them for true. I went to a place that worked on truck tires, not everyone had the equipment to accommodate the wheels.