Stroh

I pulled my original spare from its carrier and found it to be in remarkably good shape.


In fact it still had the stickers on the treads... 38 years later. Freaked me out a little, I gotta tell ya.


Couple questions:
Is this in fact the original spare?
Is a 1975 spare worth anything to a collector? It can't be safe as a spare now, so I'll look o replace it with fresh rubber on the rim after a media blact and paint.
What would one be worth (if anything)?

And lastly and most interesting to me... How many of you have your original spares still with your vehicle? (And why?)

I'm thinking that since my Haggerty Insurance includes 24 hour flat bed guarantee towing, I'm not dinging up my frame by jacking it up on the side of the road anyway. So maybe a spare is superfluous anyway. I'm just thinking out loud here.

As always thanks in advance fellas.

LeMans Pete

Found both my original spares for my '69 and '75 in each car. I don't see an original spare being worth much, I believe there was someone here on the forum trying to give one away a few months ago. Maybe worth $50 for the wheel? Those stickers are in excellent condition though.

LS6 Motor

It looks original, but without a restoration guide to check numbers it's just a guess. If it is original it is worth money to someone restoring that year. Here is mine out of the 82 I'm restoring, the tire had never been on the ground and you can see the K32 for Kelsey and the YA Corvette designation. The tire was in excellent condition and is the correct Goodyear with the "Temporary Use Only" on it.

gcusmano74

I could be wrong, but I don't think the factory supplied tires had the product labels attached to them. I think that tire is a replacement.
I also think it's unsafe to use that old tire. . This autumn, I went to check the air pressure on the spare tire on my (only) 16 year old Crown Vic. When I removed the cover, to my surprise, the treads were shredded and blown off the tire carcass. Still holding air. Very impressive.

mds3013

I still have mine. It has rolled about 10mi.. I had a flat back in the early '80's and used it. It is not safe to use any tire this old at highway speeds. I saved mine as pictured and bought another YJ8 for the spare. I will always carry a spare and tools to change a flat. As I have posted before, think of you car being pulled up a rollback bed with a flat front tire, goodbye tire and maybe wheel. mike...

MidShark

Stroh, what is the date code on your tire? (It's the numbers after the DOT stamp). I tend to agree that a spare wouldn't have the labels on it.

Here is the spare I pulled out from my '75 this past fall, I was amazed at how nice the outside of the wheel and tire was:



Here is a shot of the date code, found on the inboard side- the last 3 digits are the week of the year (20) and the year (4, for 1974). My car was built on the 1st day of production in the fall of '74.

gbvette62

I'm pretty sure, that's not the original spare.

In 1975, the OEM Firestone tire being installed on Corvettes (and other GM cars), was the infamous "Firestone Steel Radial 500".

The 500 was a steel belted radial made by Firestone from around 1972, till 77 or 78. The 500's were poorly designed, and suffered from thread separation, from the day they were introduced. Problems with them were known as early as 1973, and there was an initial recall of a small number of 500's in 77. Ultimately, it took the NHTSA to force Firestone to recall all remaining Firestone 500's, in 1978. In the end, Firestone ended up having to recall somewhere between 7 and 10 million tires!

I'd bet the dating on your tires, shows their date of manufacture, to be sometime in 1977. They were probably replaced under the initial Firestone recall, or just possibly by an owner that was afraid to drive on the 500's. This was pretty common back then, as everyone knew the tires were junk and dangerous to drive on, but Firestone refused to do anything until the Government gave them no choice.

GM stopped using the 500, after 1976. The Steel Belted Radial I think is the Firestone tire used on GM cars in 1977, that utilized the GM "Corporate" tread pattern. I forget the exact name of the tire that Firestone replaced the 500 with, but I think it was something like the "671 Radial"?

77 was also the last year that Chevrolet put Firestone tires on Corvettes. From 1978 on, all Corvettes came with Goodyear tires. Also in 1978, all tires switched over to the P-Metric sizing (P225/75R15), instead of the letter sizing (GR70x15).

LeMans Pete

Original 1975 spare:

Stroh

Thanks everyone. And thanks gbvette62 for the education. There certainly is a wealth of knowledge here on the forum. You guys are great.

Ironcross

.
my 68`s spare is a F70 and has never been on the car, all its 45 years was spent in the tire well.....and it does not have air in it,...its just gone.......

Stroh

Hey Midshark...

Sidenote: I just accidently typed MODshark... Think that'd be a cool name for a member... Anyway.

My date code is W2U5 CY3140 (I think.. the 4 is very faint, could be a 1)

According to your week and year codes this tire is a ???

I don't know if that help at all... Stroh

Stroh

Sooo... The 14th week of 1970 or 1980... Whichever, it is not 1975. Interesting. The stickers are still cool though.

I have NO idea what to do with this now.

Thanks for all the info guys.

Stroh

Any NCRS 80 restorations in progress need a spare?

daanbc

Firestone wanted all of them back.
My brothers 500's were replaced with S/S Radials

In 1973, only two years after the 500's debut, Thomas A. Robertson, Firestone's director of development wrote an internal memo stating "We are making an inferior quality radial tire which will subject us to belt-edge separation at high mileage".[12] Firestone introduced strict quality control measures in an attempt to fix the inherent problems, however they were not successful in totally eliminating the basic faults. In 1977 a recall of 400,000 tires produced at the problematic Decatur plant was initiated. Firestone was considered to be less than cooperative with the NHTSA during the agency's investigation into the Firestone 500. Firestone blamed the problems on the consumer, stating underinflation and poor maintenance.

On October 20, 1978, Firestone recalled over 7 million Firestone 500 tires,[13] the largest tire recall to date. Congressional hearings into the 500 also took place in 1978. The tire was found to be defective and the cause of 34 deaths. In May 1980 after finding that they knew the tires were defective, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fines Firestone $500,000 USD, which at that time was the largest fine imposed on any U.S. corporation and the largest civil penalty imposed since passage of the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Act. Multiple lawsuits were settled out of court and the constant negative publicity crippled the company's sales and share price.[14]

Quote:
Originally Posted by daanbc
Well mine is not as old or nice as yours but my 77 still has it's unused spare with original air! The two previous owners never had it down or bothered to check to see if it had air.




Firestone 500 is a great find they recalled some or all can't really remember. My brother got 90% credit from Firestone for a set that were on a 65 roadster he bought in 1980.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never occured to me that my 77 spare was rare. I assumed all vettes got "Firestone" that year. Maybe it's like the chrome horn button on the 77's that was recalled? Is this true about recalls on the firestones?

If you have the original tire it is rare. My 77 had a replacement tire which was replaced in 78 during the recall, still had the paper label on the edge of the replacement. If you have that original then 1) it is a great find and adds value, and 2) you know it is for show purposes only and cannot be used as a spare because it is Old and unsafe, and it can break apart as detailed in the recall which makes it really unsafe. Great show peice though.
David

gbvette62

Somethings not right there. It can't be 1970, because Firestone didn't make radials in 70. It can't be 1980 either, because by 80 all tires were coming metric sizes, instead of letter sizes. GR70's were probably last sold in 1978.

Even if the tire was dated 1980, it wouldn't be any good for a 1980 Corvette. Besides using the metric tires in 80, the spare used in 80 Corvettes was a "Temporary Use" spare, in size P195/85D15.

gbvette62

I had a lot of first hand experience with the Firestone 500's.

In may 1975, I took delivery of a new 1975 Nova as a company car. It came equipped with Firestone 500's. With less than 2,000 miles on the car, I had 2 of the 5 original Firestone's, suffer tread separation! The local Firestone store claimed that I caused the failures, by driving on under inflated tires.

In spite of the fact, that it was already well known about the problems with the 500's, no amount of calls to Firestone, brought any satisfaction. I went and bought (on my expense account) 5 new Goodyear's, and threw the 500's away.

By 77-78, when Firestone was finally recalling the 500's, I was in a different car, but was also now the company fleet manager. I had some success in getting refunds for some of the Firestone's we had to replace on other company cars, but I could never get a refund for the ones on my Nova, partly because I didn't have it anymore.

I bought a 74 Corvette around 79-80, that came with 5 perfect Firestone 500's. The couple I bought it from, had replaced them with Goodyear's in 75, when stories about the problems with the 500's, started to filter out in the media. The 74 was the wife's car and she refused to drive it, because she was scared of the tires. Firestone refused to give them a refund too, and by the time they were being recalled, they had decided to hold on to the Firestone's. I sold the 500's at Carlisle years later, to a guy getting ready to Top Flight a 74 big block.

I've never owned any other Firestone tires, and I never ever will either. In 03, I ordered a new Silverado. When it came in, it had Firestone's on it. I told the dealer to replace them with Goodyear's, or I wouldn't take the truck. At first, he refused, but 2 days after I walked out of his showroom, my salesman called me up and said that they would switch out the tires for me.

The worst part is that Firestone didn't learn a thing, from the problems they had with the 500's. Less than 20 years later, they were suffering the same tread separation problems with ATX's and Wilderness AT's, that they had previously suffered with the 500's. Once again, they lied about the problems, covered up the truth, blamed the owners, blamed Ford and refused to do anything about the problem, until the government forced them too. The kicker was that the bad ATX's, were coming out of the same manufacturing plant in Decatur, Illinois, as the 500's did. Does anyone think this is a coincidence?

I can hold a grudge, for a long time. I'll never own Firestones again.

birdsmith

Since everybody's showing theirs, here's MINE...


Clearly my '70 has not endured any Northern Michigan winters, 'cuz this sucker still looks new. All the molding 'teats' (is that a bad word??) are still there and this thing looks as good as it did the day the car rolled away from the dealer. It's never been on the car...

TurboStitchCW

here's mine!

Are the S/S radials worth anything? The tire is dated 1978 and the rim is dated Oct 18, 1976.