I got a visit from my RatRodder buddy today...

[mr27t]

who Lives up the street from me. He saw an article online about grinding the sidewall of a white wall tire to make them into super wide whitewalls. I also read the article and it's kind of a kewl idea. not much rubber comes off the sidewall of the tire that would make it unsafe in my opinion. The good thing is that my buddy decided after seeing this to put on some new tires finally (no more 30 year old salvage tires). He went to Wally World and grabbed himself 4 new tires and went to grinding on the sidewalls. He did a good job and they look KEWL.

Anyway, long story short... He has them mounted on the wheels/rims and needed to use my floor jack. I gave him my floor jack and I went with him to help him put on his wheels.

He does not have any lug nuts mounting his wheels to the hubs! He is using flat washers and standard nuts, NOT PROPER LUG NUTS to mount his wheels.

I just shook my head... I can't do this I told him. I took him back to my shop and we were able to dig up enough proper wheel lug nuts to mount his wheels, some of them chrome acorn mag lug nuts, some of them standard lug nuts. There all mixed up on the car and crazy as it may seem it looks so KEWL!!!

 

[Keeper]

So he ground down the sidewall on new tires and you were worried about not having the right lugnuts?

Man I will never figure out the rat trap movement.

 

[RPM]

So he ground down the sidewall on new tires and you were worried about not having the right lugnuts?

Man I will never figure out the rat trap movement.

Grinding the sidewall to expose the white is OK. Most all tires have a wide white wall in them. It is cheaper to make them all on e way and just cut off the black to expose the white. Speed rated tires do not have the white

 

[Ted Brown]

Well I learned something new today...You are saying that all standard passenger car tires, have White walls , just covered by a bit of black outer tire? You could probably go to a tire truing shop and they could cut them real nice and easy, and a nice straight line.. ??

 

[mr27t]

Yes, the wide white wall is just bellow about 1/16" layer of black rubber. It would be much more difficult to do but someone could actually reach the wide white wall with some 60 or 80 sand paper and do it by hand.

 

[c cab]

this is what you guys are talking about ive been doing this for years guys were asking me where i got the fat wide whites from I wouldnt tell them for a couple of weeks them Id ask do you want to see & show them
[ame=[media=youtube]xkcm3rh60p0[/media] - Make your own Wide White Wall tires[/ame]

 

[Keeper]

Learn something new everyday...

Still think its a bit weird grinding rubber off the sidewalls!!!

 

[Youngster]

this works...been doing it for years...thought everyone knew this trick.

Ron

 

[Todd]

When I worked as a wash jockey at the dealership in the mid 80's (Christ that makes me sound old), A guy came in with a machine and cut whitewalls into tires.

 

[T-Odd]

Todd, I saw a video a LONG time ago, before the intertubez, maybe a car show on TNN (the nashville network back then) whatever, guy had a little machine setup and would rotate the tires on the car while he slowly removed that think layer of black. It was quite uniform and looked very smooth. IIRC the guy was going around a car show making some money.

Couldn't tell at all that is was a ground down RWL tire. Nice.

For a cruiser, here to there type stuff, parade and general low speed vehicle (like my VW) I wouldn't have a problem at all driving on some ground down whitewalls... in fact if I can locate some 165 and 185 tires I might just do that. That bug can't get over 50 MPH as it is right now.

Hard part is finding whitewall or RWL 165 / 185 tires.

 

[rooster57]

I bet this would be easier if it were mounted on a junk wheel with about 20 lbs of air in it. You could even make some sort of holder for your grinder that would be attached to the center of the wheel ( like a trailer spindle) and would by hand rotate around the diameter of the outside of the whitewall and make the outer grind line uniform. Then adjust it in , in 1/2 increments untill you reach the minor diameter. I be one of the CAD Cam guys could whip up a diagram in a snap.

 

[Leon renaud]

A friend of mine that moved here in Ct. from Cali.told me about this more than 25 years ago said that the parts store he worked in had a machine that "cut" the side walls for white walls.He said he could cut any width or number of bands also had a truing machine that cut tires round after mounting.

 

[mr27t]

For the creativeness nature in all of us...

I was thinking that if someone could cut the black sidewall down to make a solid whitewall then it would be entirely possible to cut your own favorite design or even little images of T-buckets into the sidewall of a tire. That would surely stand out at a car show!