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This is a continuation of the Hilton Head Concours discussion that got on the subject of blackwall tires and how some members have them and like them.
I have a 1932 Club Sedan with an 8 cylinder engine.
To make this rather lengthy story sequential, let me start by saying that one time, long ago, I had occasion to follow behind my car, and the rear tires seemed to be hopping up and down quite a bit. I also wondered, as others (e.g., Rick Horne) have suggested, whether front wheel shimmy (death wobble) might be correlated to wheel balance. In any case, I talked to quite a few people about balancing my tires, but found no way to do this that was both cosmetically and mechanically satisfactory.
Two years ago, I decided to replace my very old Martin Custom Tire side-mounts with tires which would safely transport me should I have to change a flat. And I wanted to get tires that – with a vinyl cover – would easily fit into the side-mount wells, which the Coker 700×17 tires that I was driving on would not. The best tires I could find were Michelin 650/700x17s, which with the vinyl covers not only fit easily into the wheel wells, but which also had a higher load rating (1955 lb) than anything else I looked at. There were two disadvantages, at least so I thought at the time: (1) they cost twice as much as most other 700×17 tires, and (2) they were blackwalls. But because of their superior quality, I bought them anyway.
About six months ago, I decided to replace my four driving 700×17 Cokers. They were about 20 years old and showing some dry rot. And I decided to again go with the 650/700×17 Michelins. You know, blackwalls do look kind of neat and rather authentic. And maybe they would be better balanced than the Cokers.
The tire shop checked the balance first on my four wheels and then on the four wheel/tire combinations. The Michelins were on average no better balanced than the Cokers.
I talked to Centramatic about their balancing product, which they say is used a lot on trucks. Unfortunately, they don’t make anything that would fit my Pierce, and it would have cost quite a bit to make a custom product.
So I decided to try Dyna Beads in the tubes of my Michelins. (And by the way, on my second Michelin purchase, I went with the 450/600-17/18 tubes made by and recommended by Michelin. They look small, but probably help provide a good tube to tire fit and have worked well so far.) So far I haven’t had a chance to drive behind my car to asses wheel hop, but once I get on a decent road and have driven enough to eliminate the tire flat spots, the car seems to ride very smoothly. (And by the way, the weight of Dyna Beads I put in each tube was based on the weight the balance machine said was needed to balance the tire, and then this weight was adjusted downward because the wheel weights go on the rim of a wheel while the Dyna Beads act at the outside radius of the inside of the tube.)
So anyway, summing up a very long story, I like my Michelin blackwalls with my Dyna Beads inside.
Hope the photo comes through.
I did a quick survey of the post 1914, (when white walls were reportedly, by Wikipedia, invented,) cars at the Hilton Head show. Roughly, 25% had black walls, including the best of show winning Stutz, along with one of the Pierces, the Duesenberg and an Auburn. I just ran thru the pictures I took and cut it off about 1938. I might have missed a car or two.
Considering that I never heard of Dyna Beads, I went looking on Google.
Here is a YouTube piece on Dyna Beads.
Peter, an interesting You Tube demo that I hadn’t seen before.
Dyna Beads can be a whole separate discussion, but I think an important one for those cars for which wheel mounted weights are impractical. Bead pluses include: (1) they will center themselves across the sectional width of the tire, whereas stick-on and rim mounted weights will not, (2) to some extent, they can adjust tire balance to different tire shapes and sizes caused by such things as temperature changes and non-symmetrical tire wear, (3) they are not visible, (4) because they act at a larger radius, they are more effective per ounce than weights that are mounted on the wheel. Wheel mounted weight advantages include: (1) they act even at very low speeds, (though they are not much needed in this speed range), (2) they are cheap and convenient since virtually all tire shops are used to dealing with them, (3) they can be used for low profile tires, while Dyna Beads are not recommended, and (4) they can be installed very quickly, whereas if Dyna Beads are to be installed in an inner-tube, the valve stem must be removed, and it can take a few minutes to get them in.
Dyna Beads is a brand name, and other brands are probably available.