bias ply tires
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June 09, 2017You know we love a good Barn Find, and they don't get much better than a 1954 Corvette Barn Find. This one is a real deal survivor, parked in 1964 and stored for more than 50 years. This jewel showed up at our doorstep earlier this week, and we just couldn't stop marveling at the completeness of the car. Sure, many parts of the car were in need of restoration, but then you'd mask the originality with shiny paint and chrome plated finishes. As it is now, this barn find is a piece of automotive history, and preservation versus restoration would be a delicate balance. With the incredible documentation that came with the car, the new owner plans on leaving it in "as found" condition, aside from getting it running, cleaned up and of course, putting some new tires on it! The new owner of this epic
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November 21, 2016Alright, this one is a little bit out of the ordinary, but it stopped us in our tracks at the 2016 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. In a sea of highly customized cars, trucks, boats and motorcycles, this utilitarian pickup truck stood out like no other. It is a 1966 Toyota Stout 1900, and it offered great horsepower and a rugged design, which allowed it to serve as the ultimate work horse for many years, especially in Japan and Thailand. This particular truck was in the Toyota USA booth, and its home is in the Toyota museum in Torrance, California. The Toyota Stout pickup offers 85 horsepower, and came from the factory with bias ply tires. The folks at Toyota USA equipped the truck with a set of our BFGoodrich 7.50-14 blackwall tires, which are a perfect fit for the original steel wheels. Take a look at our quick video
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November 03, 2016Tri-Five Chevys are super hot right now, and we were so excited to see the Tri-Five Nationals pop up a couple years ago in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Our buddy, Chris Sondles from Woody's Hot Rodz is responsible for organizing the Tri-Five Nationals, and he has a great crew to help him knock it out of the park every year. One of the biggest attractions for the Tri-Five Nationals (aside from the 2,000-plus Tri-Fives) is the Give-Away car. Last year, it was a very cool '55 Chevy, which we featured here on the Coker Tire blog. Then, for 2016, it was a high tech '56 Chevy. For 2017, we're proud to announce that Woody's Hot Rodz built an incredible 1957 Chevy gasser. This thing is nuts! The car is built using a brand new steel body from Woody's and a new gasser chassis from No Limit. It has a legit fiberglass front end from
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November 01, 2016The Firestone Wide Oval Radial tire is something we've been dreaming about for years. We're muscle car guys and we're tire guys, so we've always wanted to mix authentic looks with the ride, safety and tread life of a modern radial. Coker Tire is proud to announce the brand new Firestone Wide Oval Radial, a product that uses Firestone heritage and radial construction to create the ultimate muscle car tire! These tires are now available and shipping from our Chattanooga, Tennessee and City of Industry, California locations, as well as our worldwide distributors. This is an exciting new product for us and we think you'll agree that it's time to put a new set of Firestone Wide Oval Radials on your muscle car! Along with the new product launch, we're also celebrating 50 years of the Firestone Wide Oval. As the muscle car era exploded in the mid-to-late '60s, the horsepower levels went sky high and that meant the
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May 20, 2015We get around to a lot of car shows here in the Southeast, and just because we're not set up as a vendor doesn't mean we're not interested in the event. The Goodguys Nashville Nationals is a great example, as it's just a couple hours away from our office, and it offers up a couple thousand cars and trucks. The venue for the event is LP Field, which is right across the river from downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It's an excellent show, and we're always glad to sneak away from the office to check it out and snap a few pictures of cars with our tires and wheels! And though the weather may have hindered the overall turnout, the event was still huge and gave us a lot of cool stuff to look at. Oh, you like cool stuff, too? Well, you're in luck, as we've compiled a bunch of our favorite hot rods, muscle cars and classic trucks that feature our tires and wheels.
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May 14, 2014
It's a decision every car enthusiast must make when it comes time to buy new tires--bias ply or radial? The decision affects the authenticity of your vehicle and it affects the ride quality of your vehicle, but finding a happy medium has not always been an option until now. Coker Tire offers both bias ply and radial tires in its massive product selection, but it now offers a radial tire that features the pie-crust shoulder and narrow tread profile of a bias ply tire. So, what's right for your ride?
BIAS PLY TIRES
Bias Ply Tires are authentic for American cars built before 1976, but they don't offer the same handling characteristics as a modern radial. Everyone has an opinion on the upsides and downsides both bias ply and radial tires, but it all boils down to your preference. Our suggestion is to take a good look at your build style and work from there. If you're building a numbers-matching, nut-and-bolt restoration, bias ply tires are the way to go, because your goal is authenticity. Our bias ply tires are built in original molds, which have been refurbished to today's standards and utilize modern materials for a safe and correct tire. In addition to using authentic, original molds, Coker Tire also has licensing agreements to use popular brand names such as Firestone, BFGoodrich and U.S. Royal.Inside a bias ply tire, the cords are run diagonally from bead to bead, overlapping in a crisscross pattern. The bias ply tire progressed over the time it was used in auto manufacturing, but the general construction techniques stayed the same. For instance, the Firestone 6.00-16 that rolled beneath countless passenger cars in the '30s and '40s features the same basic construction as the Firestone Wide Oval tires that were used on millions of muscle cars from 1967 to 1974. Bias ply tires typically follow the ruts and breaks in the road surface, so it provides a wandering sensation if you're not accustomed to driving an old car.
RADIAL TIRES
Starting in the 1970's, many American auto manufacturers began making the switch from bias ply tires to radial tires. Today, radial tires are still in use--and while the tire technology has grown in leaps and bounds since the '70s, each tire constructed using the same basic principles. Coker Tire was the first company to introduce a wide whitewall radial tire, and did so in 1994. It changed the face of the antique tire market, and the line of nostalgia radials continues to grow. Now, Coker offers whitewalls, redlines and gold line tires in both bias ply and radial construction.
The cords on a radial tire run straight across the tire, from one bead to the other. The radial cord layout, in addition to steel belting that rides beneath the tread surface helps stabilize the sidewall and tread patch, while allowing the tire to better conform to the road's surface. While a bias ply tire follows the ruts and breaks in the road, a radial tire will skim across the top and soak up some of the transitions. This makes for a smoother ride, and allows you to release the white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel on a rough road. If you're building a car that will see thousands of miles each year, your best bet is likely a radial, as you will enjoy the smoother ride quality and longer tread life.BEST OF BOTH WORLDS--THE BIAS LOOK RADIAL
Coker Tire revolutionized the tire industry in 2013 by introducing the bias look radial--a tire that has the authentic appearance of a bias ply tire with the internal construction and handling of a radial. The product was a huge hit at the SEMA Show, where it won the Best New Product award in the Tires & Accessories Category. The new tire is under the American Classic brand, and it's available in nine sizes to fit a multitude of applications, most of which are from the late '40s, '50s and early '60s. Coker Tire offers the American Classic Bias Look Radial in whitewall and blackwall configurations. The tires are getting great feedback, and we love seeing them pop up on the show field on everything from Tri-Five Chevys and Corvettes to Ford Thunderbirds and Cadillacs.It's a decision every car enthusiast must make when it comes time to buy new tires--bias ply or radial? The decision affects the authenticity of your vehicle and it affects the ride quality of your vehicle, but finding a happy medium has not always been an option until now. Coker Tire offers both bias ply and radial tires in its massive product selection, but it now offers a radial tire that features the pie-crust shoulder and narrow tread profile of a bias ply tire. So, what's right for your ride? Keep reading to find out. -
January 31, 2013The America's Most Beautiful Roadster award is one of the most prestigious awards in the hot rod world, and it's given away every year at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California. We were on hand for the Roadster Show, and speculated that John Mumford's 1927 Ford Track-T roadster would take home the 8-foot tall trophy, and we were right! John's roadster is top notch in every way, and it fully deserves the AMBR title. Since it wears a set of Firestone Deluxe Champion tires, we figured you might want to see more of it!
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August 09, 2012If you know much about Coker Tire, then you know we are 100-percent in favor of driving your classic car or hot rod. Drive it hard and drive it often--it's the reason we spend so much time getting them running and driving properly, so you might as well take advantage of it! A guy by the name of John Gilbert is doing just that with a wickedly-chopped Model A coupe, and he decided to stop by Coker Tire along the way. [caption id="attachment_2784" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Looks comfy![/caption] John is a freelance photographer and writer and does a lot of work for Street Rodder magazine. He has been around hot rods, motorcycles and classic trucks
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April 21, 2012First off, don't call it a Chrysler because it ain't one! Although these cars were manufactured by Chrysler and resembled all of the corporation's weird cars of the early '60s, this car was sold as an Imperial Crown...not a Chrysler. Anyway, these are super cool cars and they're extremely rare, so we were surprised to see Todd Dockery pull up to our shop in one of these! He needed new tires, so we were able to get him back on the road with period correct tires for his classic Chrys...err, Imperial. The interesting thing about the '63 Imperial is that hundreds of changes were made from the previous year's production,
