How far has the general automobile tire come since it was first put on an automobile? For instance, how much longer do they last? What kind of tire pressure did those automobiles require their tires to be at? How much did they cost? Thanks
Well, I can tell you that if you look at old photos of early cars, you will often several spare tires. This was because flats were a very common (maybe daily) occurence. Everyone that drove, knew how to change a tire, and most knew how to patch a tube.
I have a friend that is now in his 80’s who told me that when he was a kid, a trip from Hollywood to La Canada (about 10-12 miles) was about a 2-3 hour trip between flats, and the car overheating on the way up the hill.
Tires have come a very long way
The tires on some old cars were smooth, white rubber with no treads.
We have a 1907 car in the museum in which I work. We’re restoring it to its former glory, which includes having to replace the black treaded tires with the white ones-- which, by the way, are not all that easy to find these days.
I’ve ridden in a 1916 Pierce-Arrow that had very high, wooden spoked wheels. The tires were quite thin for their height, almost like a motorcycle tire.
Slight hijack - back in the mid 80’s they took a couple of old stores out on Columbia Street in New Westminster. This was when they were building the Columbia Skytrain Station. On the exposed wall of the building next door was a nearly pristine ad for tires c 1920’s, Firestones, I think. They were also the high, thin type. The local paper ran a picture of it. I was sure sorry to see it covered up again.
I’m 57 and I can remember in the early 60’s when anything over 20,000 on a tire was pretty good.
At the Reno, NV car museum they have some VERY old cars with period tires. They are all jacked up off the ground because, according to the tour guide, the tires of the time were so soft that if they sat in one spot anything on the ground would eventually push through the tire. IIRC good milage in 1910 was 1,000 miles.
No doubt about it, tires and automobiles have improved a lot. 10-15000 miles was about all they were good for in the early '30’s and flats were rather common. You also didn’t have a spare wheel with a mounted tire in many cars of that time. The rim was a split rim. You had “tire irons” that were used to pry the rim apart so that it’s diameter was reduced and you could get the tire and tube off. Then you found the leak. If it wasn’t obvious you pumped the tube up with a hand pump and searched for it. Having found it you patched it, put it back in the tire and installed both on the rim. Then you hammered the rim back into shape; locked the keeper that prevented the split in the rim from coming apart and reinflated the tire with a hand pump.
Off the OP but cars are super now as compared to then. You never heard of getting 100000 miles on an engine before overhaul. Unbelievable! And from the time I can remember people have said, “They’re making the steel thinner every year.” If that were true the steel in the body would now be nonexistent. Windshield wipers were vacuum operated and when you stepped hard on the accelerator the wiper stopped. Heaters were not very effective. In the winter you drove with a blanket over your lap. The windows were ordinary plate glass so in an accident there were glass shards all over the place. Lights were barely adequate.
And most cars had no sun visor.
Ah yes, the bad old days!
The car I mentioned previously, and another model we have, have oil lamp headlights. There’s a dull metal mirror in the back of the lamp which ostensibly would help reflect more light toward the plain glass lens, but to say the least, I imagine it would be very dim going.
No tail lights, either. The headlights have a red cut glass “gem” on the back of the headlight lamp, and because they’re set out from the body of the car, I suppose it’s possible that another driver coming down the road would be able to see a faint red gleam from them.
Of course, there weren’t many other cars on the road, so I suppose oncoming and following traffic wouldn’t be much of an issue anyway.
I was recently reading a comprehensive how-to book about automobiles, published in the mid 1920’s. They recommended bringing two mounted spares, two unmounted spares and a patch kit for an auto tour. My grandfather and his brothers recalled travelling by car from Chicago to Fort Wayne, Indiana around 1920, on a road that was basically a narrow dirt track between cornfields. They could lean out and touch the corn from either side of the car. It may have been the road as much as the tires, but they fixed ten flats on the trip.
When I was boy[20s]The men in the family exercised bragging rights about having had tires which lasted for as much as 3 or 4 thousand miles.
This was always accepted by the listeners with a knowing grin.
Flats were a way of life ands it wasn’t always because of the tires.
The roads were often mere paths and the options were few--------hazards in the road were varied from sharp stones,old bottles and lost tools from previous flat-fixers and whatever the last driver left behind in the last mudhole…
WE have gone from 30x3.5 through 4.75x19,6.00x16,various 14" sizes and are now returning to 16" and 17" and 19".
Probably the first tires ,being nothing more than bicycle tires of-the day ,carried approximately 60 PSI and came with rubber -band- gun repair kits.
The change from that to the inner tube tire to the tubeless tire took decades and tire sizes were more a matter of overall design than the practical.
Tires were an easy way to alter the profile if this years car–the advertisement for which was dsesigned to tell you that you were a fool to have bought the model you had.
Even today the pressure depends on usage and frictional heat.
But I remember the fascinating odors in the old-time tire shop----------when natural rubber was the norm.
It was a great time to be growing up==
OL’ EZ
More recently, tire performance technology has increased so much in the last 15 to 20 years that basically any base model, lightweight, 4 cylinder economy car of today can completely outperform any sportscar of the 60s & 70s merely by putting low profile, high performance tires on it.
I was recently wondering about how good tires were. About two sets of tires ago, I was able to put 100,000 mile tires on my Ranger, and believe me, I got about 110,000 out of them. Last few times I shopped, there were (almost) no 100 grand tires out there. The best were rated for only 60-80. Not bad, but not the same. The Pep Boys guy thought maybe they had gotten away from the harder rubber used to make them - not as soft a ride. But I think it was marketing.