CASO wide whites

[mbstude]

Go ahead and laugh. (I'm already laughing). I want wide whites on the Broadmoor, but I'm not going to spend nearly $1000 bucks to have 'em. The tires on the car are 205/75 radials and they "fit" the car in my eyes. They're a couple of years old but brand new with almost no miles on them.

So.. For $30 I bought a can of white wall paint off ebay. I figure at that price it's worth a try, the reviews I found were good and it sounded promising. Worst case scenario I remove the paint with thinner. So, nothing to lose.

I had a couple of extra hours today so I tried it out. After painting on the white I took a detail brush and painted the outer edge of the wheel black, as that's all I had and it looks better than rust. The spoked '57 wheel covers are pretty rough and I need to restore 'em, so I'm going to run a NOS set of '56s until I can get around to making those '57s perfect.

Anyways.. Time and usage will tell if it'll last, but I'm extremely pleased with how it looks. Most people probably won't notice they aren't "real" white walls, and I guarantee that nobody is going to notice when driving down the road.

[Flashback]

LOL, LOL, LOL, Now that that's done. I think it looks pretty doggone good. Good enough , I might try it on the Saturday night special. Was it pretty simple to apply? What ebay seller?

[StudeRich]

Looks Good Matt, and as you said, from 20 feet who could tell. Well worth the $7.50 each.

So they were narrow whites, and you just painted the inside black stripe white then?

[mbstude]

Here it is. http://tinyurl.com/7hxpmw9

Applying it was just a matter of cleaning the tire and brushing it on. The hardest part is making sure you don't get the paint where you don't want it. But I found that thinner fixed that problem.

Rich, the tires have the skinny whitewall, which I hate on an old car. They were mildew stained and nothing I tried would clean them, so that was justification to try the paint. So I painted over the existing whitewall and the black portion closest to the wheel.

[53k]

Go ahead and laugh. (I'm already laughing). I want wide whites on the Broadmoor, but I'm not going to spend nearly $1000 bucks to have 'em. The tires on the car are 205/75 radials and they "fit" the car in my eyes. They're a couple of years old but brand new with almost no miles on them.

So.. For $30 I bought a can of white wall paint off ebay. I figure at that price it's worth a try, the reviews I found were good and it sounded promising. Worst case scenario I remove the paint with thinner. So, nothing to lose.

I had a couple of extra hours today so I tried it out. After painting on the white I took a detail brush and painted the outer edge of the wheel black, as that's all I had and it looks better than rust. The spoked '57 wheel covers are pretty rough and I need to restore 'em, so I'm going to run a NOS set of '56s until I can get around to making those '57s perfect.

Anyways.. Time and usage will tell if it'll last, but I'm extremely pleased with how it looks. Most people probably won't notice they aren't "real" white walls, and I guarantee that nobody is going to notice when driving down the road.

They do look great Matthew. I didn't know they still sold that stuff. That was what I used when I was younger than you (and that was a LONG time ago). Hope it does better for you than it did on my '47 Dodge convertible- only lasted a few days before it started flaking off (of course I was driving pretty "vigorously" on poor roads). 205x75s are too small for your car though. It came with at least 7.10x15s which convert to more like 225x75x15s

[1954khardtop]

Looks good Matt, hope you keep us posted on how it holds up.

[Bob Andrews]

Very cool! If it works it will be a great, if temporary, solution for us WWW lovers. And, somebody we know and trust will give us a real-world durability report. Do keep us posted, and thanks!

[mbstude]

I'll definitely post how well it lasts. The car is still a ways from being a driver. I still need to buff out the paint on the driver's side and detail the engine bay, replace the broken front door glasses and a few other little things. I got a call tonight from Don Simmons saying that my new dual exhaust system will be finished tomorrow, so we're getting there. Driving the car in weather and a few hundred miles will be the test on this paint. I'm sure it'd always look great if the car never left the garage.

[StudeDave57]

well, sort of...

205x75s are too small for your car though. It came with at least 7.10x15s which convert to more like 225x75x15s

Per Fred Fox's August, 1993 feature article on '57 sedans/wagons~

6.70x15s were the standard tire for Broadmoor wagons~
and 7.10x15s were OPTIONAL on same...
(check Matt's PO here~ http://forum.studebakerdriversclub.c...263#post600263 )

Either way- that looks pretty darn good Matt--
I may have to follow your lead on that there project!!!
I also have 205/75s on my wagon, but with NO whitewall at all.

[9echo]

Matt, the white walls look great. I hope you have better luck than I did 60 years ago when I tried to make white walls on a new '51 Ford Black Victoria. Boy, was that a mistake. The white turned yellow after a few days. We had to turn the tires around on the rims and sell it with black facing out.

[dnevin]

looks a bit safer than this, Matt:

[Green 53]

I painted whitewalls on my first car a black 47 Chevy Club coupe back in 1954. I used to buy the paint at Montgomery-Ward. They looked good and lasted quite awhile. Had to touch them up from time to time.

Denny L

[kmac530]

dnevin,
While that technique does not look overly safe, it did used to be a common to cut whitewalls in tires. At the Buick dealership I worked {yes Warren, Bay Buick, formerly Lyons Buick, formerly Butler Buick} at in 1980 we had a WW cutting machine. It was a small set of rollers that the wheel sat on and it had an electric motor than spun the wheel and it had an arm with a cutter head on it. You set the cutter where you wanted it and turned on the motor and pushed the cutter head against the tire. It cut through the existing white wall and even wider usually and gave the tire a nice fresh shiney WW to be displayed on the front line of the lot.

I worked in the detail shop back then, back when dealerships had a department for EVERYTHING. We ran a FULL detail shop there.

[Sdude]

Looks great in the picture. Time will tell how they last. You deserve a golden CASO pin for that one. You can be proud.....

[dnevin]

dnevin,
While that technique does not look overly safe, it did used to be a common to cut whitewalls in tires. At the Buick dealership I worked {yes Warren, Bay Buick, formerly Lyons Buick, formerly Butler Buick} at in 1980 we had a WW cutting machine. It was a small set of rollers that the wheel sat on and it had an electric motor than spun the wheel and it had an arm with a cutter head on it. You set the cutter where you wanted it and turned on the motor and pushed the cutter head against the tire. It cut through the existing white wall and even wider usually and gave the tire a nice fresh shiney WW to be displayed on the front line of the lot.

I worked in the detail shop back then, back when dealerships had a department for EVERYTHING. We ran a FULL detail shop there.

That's what I like about this forum--you learn something everyday.

Thanks Kelly!