Just to add my bit to the radial/bias ply discussion:
When I bought my '65 Morgan it had Avon bias ply tires (Roadspeeds?) with
tubes and boots. I replaced them with Pirelli radials with tubes, leaving
the boots in place. These lasted about ten years, even though the Morgan
was my daily commute car. I replaced them with Michelin radials and had
some trouble finding tubes as 15" wheels were out of fashion then. The
boots looked bad, I was afraid to touch them as they micght have
disintegrated and I had no new ones on hand. I drove the car until 1987 on
these tires.
I had trouble with shimmy only once and that was in the early eighties, it
scared me to death, but it turned out to be a broken blade. I had one flat
tire in all those years, about 100,000 miles, and that was due to a nail.
Knock-offs certainly make roadside tire changes easier!
My only real problem during the first few years was when I decided to
repaint the wheels, I had trouble getting them off the splines. From then
on I painted them every year in the spring and put anti-seize on the
threads and splines.
Good luck!
Howard Clark
Brookston, IN
'65 +4 2-seater
'36 Cord Sedan
'47 Ford Street Rod
Howard Clark
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