Quote:
Originally Posted by mary and bob
Just for laughs; I have a 1946 Bantam trailer (civilian version of the WW2 Jeep trailer) and it has the original tires and they still hold air. It no longer gets used on the highway, but was up until about 1970. Should I replace those tires or see if I can get a few more years out of them as they have plenty of tread left on them.
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You should absolutely run them, but I don't see what that has to do with the current discussion.
Your tires are probably 8 or 10 actual plies, not just ply rated. They are bias ply tires that were overbuilt for most of the actual work they did and flexed very little while doing it. They probably don't now carry loads near their full rated capacity across the hot desert, at 70 MPH and under delicate
fiberglass fenders that would be severely damaged if one let go. And they probably weren't built in the absolute cheapest way by the lowest bid from a foreign country. Modern tires are built with very thin flexible sidewalls and designed to flex. They are also only strong enough to carry the trailers they are supporting without much margin. And with
fiberglass trailers, I don't know of anyone that is trying to keep an authentic WW2 look. Or, put another way, should people be running the original tires from, the 1970's, on their Burros, or other brands and pretending there is no need to buy new ones, because the look is authentic in parades and they haven't yet blown out?
There are always some surviving things from a bygone era that somehow are still here and serviceable. That's nice, but it doesn't represent the norm. It doesn't make sense to claim that just because a tire made in the 1940s hasn't popped yet, that all tires made since are perfectly fine. Or are you claiming that since your tires are still good, that all other WW2 tires are still good too?
Maybe we should all agree on 70 years as a reasonable use period and a logical change point. That's a good round upper limit. 18 months is probably the shortest period we need to consider. So, now we have a working range and can begin to dial in the most practical period. It's somewhere between 18 months and 70 years. Now we're getting somewhere!