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TM's for the Deuce
TM's for the Deuce
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That's nuts... I see a decent amount of modern car tires starting to dry rot after 4-5 years. I've seen some tires that were in that age range that had dry rot go all the way to the steel belts. It's a ton of fun trying to tell a customer they need tires when their reply is "What? Those tires aren't even halfway worn!"I had NYLON tires on one of the Deuces I had, they had no visible dry rot or anything that would tip you off to a problem. Drove the truck all summer, no problems. First day it was 10 degrees you would swear the front end of my truck was going to fall off. Rough shaking and wobble. Checked the joints, bearings, etc , nothing. Took the tires and rims to a local truck tire place that had been around for decades, BINGO, not only were my tires egg shaped cold, but twisted the internal NYLON bands were not expanding at the same rate as the mixed material tire itself . He also managed to get the date from the code stamped on the tire, 1965. This was in 2001 ! Well, I Pulled all the NYLON tires off the truck and replaced them with good used steel/rubber tires. The problem vanished.
Tires can be deceptive, here are two on a Deuce I have now, no rot but were made in 1957 ! What ever they were made of, its scary.
Fixed it for ya.Do NOT buy anything from China if you expect it to last. I've had tires and air hoses quickly crack/dry rot if exposed to the sun within 2-4 years. Our military tires are made to last for many years, perhaps at the expense of comfort, high mileage, or high-speed travel.
As a personal practice, I try to not buy anything made in China due to the lack of quality control and short expected lifespan.
I too had some tires from Firestone. The car is was using was my old Crown Victoria (ex-cop car ) It had set for a couple of years since we had bought the Honda Crv. We'll my wife wrapped it around a tree that winter so she ended up using my car, and I had to drove the old Crown Vicky. I had bought NEW tires for it before I parked it, and they looked great. But after driving only 2 days the right front split all around the rim. I was going 50 MPH at the time. After I got the tire replaced, I checked it out to see what had happened. A rock? A nail ? No dry rotted all the way through. Needless to say I bought a full set of tires right then. Now I'm a mechanic, and I couldn't spot the dry rot. It was all inside. My best friend (we went to trade school together ) owns a gas station. The old kind, full service and repair. He told me after this incident, he tells his customers to replace there tires every 4 or 5 years no matter what the tread looks like. Cheap Chinese Crap !!!!You got that right, Chinese Rubber is garbage. I put four new tires, Firestones on my M1009 three years ago. Drove it maybe 8K miles . Not only are they cracked and showing rot, but the rubber was so soft it wore through two thirds in that mileage ! But sad to say there are very few American tire companies left.
The military rubber in the old days was not really all rubber. From what I learned there was a lot of experimentation and formulas tried. The NYLON mix stuff hates the cold. NYLON belts with a NYLON / Synthetic Rubber / Rubber mix was my problem. When it got cold , it got nasty and deformed.
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