Vintage motorcycle tire styles

[DougC]

This is a question about tires, but only as it relates to board-track-era cycles (from 1900 to 1920 or so).
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I am considering attempting to make my own tires, so that I can have ones that look better than what is available. This will be so that I (and possibly others) can obtain tires that--while not the exact same dimensions--will at least have the correct tread styles and colors (something so far no commercial MTB tire company has been able to do). I haven't ever worked with molding rubber before, but all the people who say it can't be done have never tried it themselves and can't explain to me exactly why it can't be done--so I'm going to give it a spin, more or less.

What I already know is that all the required materials are available separately. I have some other things going on so it may be a month or two before I start messing with any of it.

There's plenty of Chinese companies that will do custom production work and they could do it much cheaper and better on their factory equipment than I could by hand, but there's two problems with them: most have a minimum order quantity of one 20-foot container of tires, and the cost of tooling a new tire tread mold is tens of thousands of dollars,,, and you don't even own it after you pay for it, you're just paying them to make a mold that they keep. (-Not that you would really have much use for the tire mold on your own, but the point is that even if you decide you no longer want their services, then they are free to crank out tires on a mold you paid your own money to build-)

So, I started looking around online for old photos showing what kinds of tires that these cycles really used to find out what varieties I'd need to create--and there appears to be only two styles, with some possible color variations among them. The two styles are the "button tread" and the "ribbed", and some other possibles are shown as well.
See this page:
http://www.norcom2000.com/users/dcim...ack/tires.html

If you can produce a vintage photo showing another style of tire tread, I'd like to see it. Be warned, I have been looking for a number of days now in my spare time with lots of search terms, on English-language pages, out to 40-50+ Google page results. If you can read other languages you may find things I missed, however.

Also note that for this purpose, only vintage photos are useful as evidence. Any modern restoration may have used the incorrect tires simply because it was one that was cheaper or easier to obtain than the proper tire, or they couldn't find any information that said what the proper tire really was.
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[Saabsonettguy]

I believe some variation of ribbed tread tires in white or black rubber were a fairly popular choice for the board track racing crowd. I imagine different tires may have been used for dirt tracks or endurance runs on roads.

Lots of good clear vintage shots.
http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com...y-h-d-history/
http://www.acenturyofmotorcycling.com/photos.htm
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5534?size=_original

Here's a few very detailed pictures, although they may not be racing tires specifically.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5116?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4999?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/3587?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5914?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5169?size=_original

An advert with good view of the tread patterns.
http://books.google.com/books?id=RN8...0tires&f=false

I do know that white and black button tread tires are available in 26" through coker.

[DougC]

Thanks, a couple pages there I had not found.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5914?size=_original
These are Goodyear tires, I had seen a bunch of ads for them but none saying they were made for motorcycles.

Originally Posted by Saabsonettguy

...I do know that white and black button tread tires are available in 26" through coker.

Those are vintage clinchers in fractional sizes. The diameter is wrong for MTB rims, and they won't fit on modern bicycle wheels at all because the tire bead is different.


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[scottyo]

Hey Doug,
Im afraid I dont know much about making tires, but if youre strictly looking for a good vintage style tire and not in this for the challenge of making your own, then I would check out the Felt Thick Brick:

http://2009.feltracing.com/09-catalo...iser-tire.aspx

They fit on a 24" wheel but are so fat that they have a total diameter similar to a typical 26" tire/wheel. Their tread is very vintage and they have cream and black colors.

Also the schwalbe fat frank is really nice and comes in brown as well (26" only).

[DougC]

Plodding onward-

The 5-rib "board-track" tire tread style is named the "Swinehart".
Go to Google Books, look up the title "Tire Making and Merchandising" by F. R. Goodell (1918) and it's on page 77 of the PDF (or page 68 of the actual book pages).

The street/dirt tread you see on vintage photos of these motorcycles (the tread with alternating rows of two and three round knobs/buttons) is called the "Kokomo".
Go to Google Books, look up the title "Pneumatic tires automobile, truck, airplane, motorcycle, bicycle" by Henry Pearson (1922), on page 659 of the PDF (654 in the actual book page numbers).

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The second book in particular shows a full 18 pages of various tire treads with 35-40 per page, but unfortunately most of them are blacked out (I guess from improper scan settings? some of them show up perfect...). It's kinda amusing to browse through; one genius seemed to only design and patent tire treads that were entirely made up of dollar ($) and cent (¢) signs. The book's author admits that (paraphrasing) "most of the many thousands of tire-tread patents awarded were merely decorative or fanciful in purpose, and conferred no real benefits beyond simpler tread designs".

I looked around for how much a copy of this book would cost, and the cheapest at the moment is $275.
So I may not be getting it anytime soon.
It does not really matter to see all of them, there were only a few of the most famous tread designs I had even considered.

Another amusing concept re-born many times was that of the "suction-cup tread". The theory was that if a tire had lots of little "O" shapes on it, the air would be squeezed out of these as they rolled under where the tire met the ground, and create a suction, giving more traction between the tire and whatever ground it was on. It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that if this principle really worked, then the tire would be more difficult to roll as well.......
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[MotorbikeMike]

Hi DougC, early on you had asked about sizes and types.

As far as I have been able to research the 2 most common, if not the only, sizes are 28x3 (medium and heavy-weight motorcycle) and 26x2,125 (light motorcycles, and many racing Motorcycles. The bicycles of the day used 28x1.5 and it is possible that some VERY early, more homemade type race motorcycles may have used them.

The reason we still have a variation of the 26x2.125 tire still, is because Ignaz Schwinn bought Excelsior Motorcycle Company about 1909, and soon went racing! The demise of the Glory Days of American Motorcycle was evident with Henry Ford's cheap mass-produced automobiles, and the Great Depression that was creeping upon them. As a business decision Ignaz folded Excelsior, which forced Frank W. Schwinn back into his fathers bicycle business. This would be around 1931.

Frank decided that he could capture a larger market share by making boy's bicycles more like the famous motorcycles. This is when he designs and introduces, among others, these things; "Schwinn Springer" (plagiarized from early motorcycles). Cantilever frames with low seating position, and put Faux fuel tanks in the straight-bar frames, also naming a line of bikes "Motocycle".

He then contacts the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, who had been making racing tires for Henry Ford since 1901. Exclesior had run hundreds of the Goodyear tires on the boards all around the country, he was able to convince Paul Litchfield then president, to resume the production of the old 26x2.125 motorcycle size of tires, convincing Paul, that they could sell enough bicycles to support the re-introduction of the old size.

Frank W. will call the new tires "balloon tires". They were a huge success, and can be found everywhere in the US still.

The closest wheels I have found are made by The Worksman Cycle Company, in the Bronx New York, where they have been making bicycles since 1898, perhaps their early clincher style rim dates back to the early style directly?

I hope some of this sheds some light on this subject.

Mike

[DougC]

Originally Posted by MotorbikeMike

Hi DougC, early on you had asked about sizes and types.

As far as I have been able to research the 2 most common, if not the only, sizes are 28x3 (medium and heavy-weight motorcycle) and 26x2,125 (light motorcycles, and many racing Motorcycles. The bicycles of the day used 28x1.5 and it is possible that some VERY early, more homemade type race motorcycles may have used them. ...

The motorcycle and bicycle tire sizes may have used the same numeric size specifications, but were not the same. The bicycle tires at that time in the US were tubulars I believe, not clinchers at all.

The closest wheels I have found are made by The Worksman Cycle Company, in the Bronx New York, where they have been making bicycles since 1898, perhaps their early clincher style rim dates back to the early style directly?...

Nope, the vintage tires and rims would not be compatible with today's tires or rims at all.

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I have a question for you now: I believe you had a photo of a motorbicycle that had the red retro BF Goodrich tires on it, did you not? If so (or to anyone who has used them) did you notice anything unusual about the traction they delivered? Was there less, more, about the same?
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[Hoodoo]

For my first vintage project I have been using 26" tires but this bike is awfully
low (I admit I have the seat down in racer fashion). But were there really
26" single cylinder Motorcycles in the early days circa 1909-1915ish or
where they usually 28" bikes? If 28" I should be using 29er tires and modding the frames and forks to fit.

[meatwad]

Originally Posted by Hoodoo

For my first vintage project I have been using 26" tires but this bike is awfully
low (I admit I have the seat down in racer fashion). But were there really
26" single cylinder Motorcycles in the early days circa 1909-1915ish or
where they usually 28" bikes? If 28" I should be using 29er tires and modding the frames and forks to fit.

Here's a pic of a 1914 Pope. I dont know what size wheels it has but it is porportionaly the same as a bicycle with 26s.


http://www.jwoodandcompany.com/2007/...12_pope_rs.jpg

[Hoodoo]

I really regret not adding six inches to the frame on my bike as mine is going to look a bit short. I really like the tank style on this pope. I got into this project with my typical charge for the guns approach. I always need help and I have to get helpers energized and then I get all excited and forget to do my homework. What has been wierd is that I have asked several people with vintage bikes for the wheel size but they haven't responded. I'll bet that pope is a 28 with about a 78" overall size. I really like the porportions of the old bikes.