MTFCA Forum

A friend gave me a T rear end with a pair of hard rubber "Roller Cushion Tires". The tires have these funny round holes with rubber cylinders inside, and lots of small cracks but they both look intact.

I've been cleaning one up to mount in my pickup bed as a "spare" (mostly cosmetic). At least I'll never have to pump it up! But I'm curious if any of you have experience driving on hard rubber rear tires-- especially hundred year old rubber. Is there a danger it will just disintegrate? Will it shake every bolt out of my car? Happy to run an experiment and report back, but thought I should check in first so I know what to expect and look for.

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As a dumb kid who scrounged through the sagebrush to build my first Model T nearly 60 years ago, my tires came from old Hoover wagons and mileage between flats was short and pitiful. Finally, one time 30 miles from home, I was forced to “come in on the rim”. Not so bad on the dirt road, but I dreaded the last five miles on pavement. To my amazement, there was really no noticeable difference in the “ride” whether on tires or the bare rim !

If it were possible to replace pneumatic tires on my current love affair with “hard rubber” I’d do it in a heartbeat. Rather problematic whether 100 year old tires can stand the gaff. Picture you showed looks mighty good to me !

Hard rubber tires are, well, hard. I can remember riding with a guy in an ALF that had hard rubber tires from the 1920's. Driving along, I'd hear an occasional dull "thud" coming from the underside of the fenders. It was chunks or rubber that leaving the tire!

So for parade use, solid rubber tires would be fine. For touring, not so much.

: ^ )

If you value your truck, and your life, these tires should be for display only. One of these falling apart under load could do serious damage to both.

A friend of mine took me for a ride on his International High-Wheeler, that had just been fitted with new hard rubber tires. (No Air) I thought it would probably ride OK on the dirt road from his house to the paved road, and then would be pretty bumpy. I was wrong. It was almost unnoticeable that the tires were hard rubber on rims. They were a little noisier on pavement, but not much. And on the dirt road, you couldn't tell them from pneumatics. I was most impressed. But those were also fresh rubber, not 40 years old and brittle.

Those are Museum tires... We had an antique car carrier at work with these tires, I played it a couple times behind the bosses back, and they were as smooth as glass, but they only lasted 2 trips from the Toll Plaza on the SFOBB to Treasure Island and back (about 10 miles total) before they started to come apart catastrophically...