I was reminiscing about the days when my 140 DHC was my daily transportation for about a year (1969-70). Being a poor college student at the time I had to run whatever tires Dad would give me from his tire shop. My question is this; has anyone else ever driven an XK on recapped snow tires? I found that 1950’s Buick wheels would work on my disc wheeled DHC so I ran the recapped snow tires on the Buick wheels in bad weather then changed to recapped straight treads come Spring. My DHC was surprisingly rusty when I found it only 13 years after it was built.
The roads were better…
The cars drove slower and the people knew how to drive…
Modern radial all seasons destroy the old bias tires.
If you drove with them today you would be run off the road by a soccer mom in a Honda pilot.
Just imagine todays tram lines, potholes and people up your bumper
gtjoey1314
MnD used recapped studded tires on the E Type: not something for dry surface performance, but the car was surprisingly good in snow…not utterly helpless, like 240Zs!
I recall buying a set of Dunlop C41 tyres for my XK120 shortly after getting the car in '63. Nice tyres and at $48. apiece not exactly cheap, however, I managed to wear them out in what I thought was an indecently rapid period of time. As the obligatory hitchhiking tour of Europe was pending I replaced them with a set of Atlas 600.16 truck tyres, available in Canada at your local friendly Esso service station and considerably cheaper than the Dunlops.
Regarding the observation that your DHC was surprisingly rusty 13 years after it was built, my DHC had only lived for ten years when I purchased it, but it was sold out of Toronto and has spent it’s whole life in southern Ontario, thus saw many salted roads every winter. The lower boot area was so decayed that I had a friend weld up a sub frame to support the spare tyre and then one of the rear frame rails collapsed as the chassis flexed when I drove the car over a ramp into a service station forecourt circa 1965. These cars, like most of the period, were not designed for winter and salt and rusted very rapidly I’m afraid.
The Atlas products lasted until the mid-seventies (mind you the car was laid up for five years when I returned to complete a couple of degrees at university) and were eventually replaced by a set of Cinturatos. Even at that point one had enough tread left to make for a passable spare.
Chris.
In the late 70’s I put 40000 miles on an XK150 coupe as my everyday driver. It had Michelin X tires which lasted many miles, mostly due to a really hard tread compound. Downside was low traction in the wet. I agree with the above comments - we drove more carefully. I recall that car as comfortable, roomy, had a decent heater, and got decent mileage on the highway in overdrive.
Dave remember the feeling when you broke 55 and pushed it to 60 and 65 in an American car.
You though you were doing 1,000
Different times.
GTJOEY1314