1996 Tire Question

[Joe L.]

Re: 1996 Tire Question

I drive the car about 1,000 miles a year. The tires on the car today have about 3-4,000 miles on them. I'm thinking that I would like to use them for everyday driving (although limited) and judging. I could probably get a few bucks for the tires on my car selling them Corvette Forum or E-Bay. I tired to order the tire at Tire Rack which had decent prices (about the same as Discount Tire) and they are on back order which means who knows when they might have them to ship. Also tried Mid America and got the Temporary Shortage message. I'll try the Corvette Forum too.

I'm going to be traveling over the next two weeks and will keep up the search.

Joe------


I expect you'll find that the "back order" will require an "infinite" wait. This is EXACTLY what happened to me as I described above. I waited for months for the "back-ordered" tires to be in stock. Finally, I called the manufacturer (Goodrich, in this case) and was told that they had not manufactured the tires in YEARS in the size I wanted and were not going to manufacture it again in the original tread style. So, if the retailers were going to wait for these tires, they were going to be waiting forever.

[Peter M.]

Re: 1996 Tire Question

Peter-----


I have found that the major retailers are often way behind on their informational resources. Awhile back I was looking for a particular Goodrich tire that had a tread pattern very similar to the original 275-40-17 Goodyear GS-C tires used on 1992 Corvettes. The Tire Rack and Discount Tire web-sites showed that they could get them in 3-4 days. When I contacted America's Tire (the brick-and-mortar division of Discount Tire), they told me they could get them in 3-4 days. Later, they found out they could not. Turned out that Goodrich had not manufactured that tire in that size in YEARS and had no plans to make any more. However, the tire remained on the Tire Rack, Discount Tire, and America's Tire web-sites for many months longer as being available in "3-4 days".

Yes, again, I don't know. Joe will have to call the vendor & check it out.

[Floyd B.]

Re: 1996 Tire Question

I'd love to see some photos of your 96 LT4, Floyd. How about posting a few for us.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the car with the black A-molds installed before I dismantled the car for restoration (I'm not very bright all the time). Shortly after I got started on the resto, my employer sent me to Philadelphia on a long-term assignment. So here I sit watching it snow outside while my cars sits in my Jacksonville garage - a beautiful 71 degrees in JAX today. Since I just purchased a '69 L36 I plan on driving that until I complete the resto of the LT-4 and get it judged. Then I 'll put the A-molds back on the LT-4 and start the resto of the '69. By the time that's done I'll probably have to look up to see the grass.

[Pat M.]

Re: 1996 Tire Question

About 10 years ago I got an extra set of correct tires for my 96 and they told me then they were hard to find. I'd imagine they're much harder to find now.