Radial Tires on 61 rims?

[Omaha_Impala]

Doing some research on tires, and I haven't seen this question asked yet:

Is it unsafe to install radial tires on wheels that were designed for bias ply?

A guy was telling me that due to differences rim design and flexibility of the radial, that the radial may be more prone to blowouts on the OE rim. I had never heard this before, wondering if anyone else has?

For my 61, I'll be running with the drum brakes, original 14x5 wheels and original wheel covers.

The car will be a weekend driver, although the plan is to take it to the Impala convention in South Dakota at least once.

One thought I had was to mount bias plys on the original rims, and find some beat up old Cragar SS rims with radials for long distance drives.

Thanks for the help.

 

[chevymusclecars]

I have radials on two of my 1966 cars and have driven them with no problems on the original wheels for years.

Bill

 

[TomO]

In 1980 I changed the tires on my car from bias ply to radial. Since then I have put 130,000 miles on with radials. The wheels are my car are the orginal 14x5 stock steel wheels. NO issues other than the tires wearing out after 50,000 miles!!!

TomO

 

[tripower]

In 1975 I bought a 66' Chevy II Nova 283 powerglide. The first thing I did was get rid of the biasply tires and put radials on. What a difference...

 

[real61ss]

With the '61, don't try running the SS wheel covers with radials, they won't stay on. Regular wheel covers are fine. Radials cause the wheel to flex and the extra weight of the spinner will cause you problems.

 

[Omaha_Impala]

With the '61, don't try running the SS wheel covers with radials, they won't stay on. Regular wheel covers are fine. Radials cause the wheel to flex and the extra weight of the spinner will cause you problems.

Wow - I never would have considered flex in the wheel, and I certainly wouldn't have associated the flex causing issues with certain wheel covers.

Priceless advice - thank you!

Based also on everyone else's comments (thanks again), I'll be mounting the radials when it is ready for the road.

I'll be running the plain jane wheel covers, since my dear old Impala is a plain jane. I found some old photos where my dad put his dog dish '55 Chevy 210 hubcaps on the '61 - it looked pretty good! I may have to try that out as well.

 

[Tom Kochtanek]

Zinging spinners

I have the original 1962 wheels and SS caps on my vehicle, run conventional street radials, and have spun the left rear off one time, taking a hard right turn under (409) power. I thought maybe I just didn't have that one tapped on all the way, now I'm thinking I may have "flexed" the wheel a bit.

Those SS spinner caps sure look good running out ahead of you .

Luckily I had a back up SS cap, the spinner came out OK, original cap was all scratched up from traveling on its own . I am told that the caps for the SS version are slightly different than the caps for the Impala, sans badging and spinner.

I now have a bit more than 4000 miles, but switched wheels in the back to allow wider tires (still street radials)

Cheers!
TomK