Firestone steel radial 500 Corvette tires 1973 -77

[wayoutz]

Originally Posted by John Brown

I had five of them replaced free on a 74 Corvette I bought used. Firestone didn't care that I wasn't the original purchaser, they just wanted to get them off the road.

Must have been in late 80 or 81. Corvette was a used car I was redoing. I heard on the TV about the recall, and that it was ending in a few days. I had the Corvette at a body shop in the middle of a repaint, so I went over there driving my 76 Monte Carlo and swapped tires and rims from one car to the other. As I recall, they wanted to see proof that I owned the car the tires were on (the Monte Carlo), but other than that, it was no problem.

.

I had a 74 LS4 convert with 7200 original miles that had this tire in the Tub never down split in half.

[Ralph Spears]

I have 9 of them in my garage for 45 years a few of them are mounted .

[SBR]

I had a 75 Corvette L82 4 speed convertible with 900 original miles that had these tires. I mounted them on the car to take some pictures and parked it overnight since I did not have time to change them out. The next morning I could see that one of them was letting loose. Thankfully there was no damage done. I don't think that I have ever changed out 4 tires faster than I did that morning.

[Ralph Spears]

These tires have been in my garage for 47 years as soon as i junk them someone will want them

[SBR]

Originally Posted by Ralph Spears

These tires have been in my garage for 47 years as soon as i junk them someone will want them

You can count on it. That's how it usually goes.

That said, I love original tires as much as anyone but there comes a point when it's simply not worth it. I personally would never sell or even give one these tires to anyone. The potential risk of future litigation if God forbid something happens to that person or their property is too great in my opinion.

[BCreekDave]

I guess you could always do this:
https://carlisletyrfil.com/products/...-flatproofing/
and just put them on for the shows.

Seems like it would take the explosion risk out of the picture. Maybe even drive short distance (slowly).

[njsteve]

Originally Posted by BCreekDave

I guess you could always do this:
https://carlisletyrfil.com/products/...-flatproofing/
and just put them on for the shows.

Seems like it would take the explosion risk out of the picture. Maybe even drive short distance (slowly).

No it wouldn't because the "explosion" is from the steel cords snapping while under extreme tension. I have had two of these tires catastrophically self destruct without even being mounted on a rim!

I think the only real way would be to get those reproduction white letter stickers custom made and put them on a new tire. :-)

https://www.tirestickers.com/product...caAolkEALw_wcB

[Unreal]

Originally Posted by fortim

I was working at Firestone during the early part of the recall; from personal experience these tires were dangerous. I saw way too many blowouts and tread separation, terrifying stuff.
As part of the recall, Firestone pulled them off the road and the serial numbers had to be cut out of every tire. Personally, I wouldn't use original 500 tires on my cars.

Did the Firestone Wide Ovals have the same issue? I have 5 never mounted, NOS F70 15 with, I think, 72-73 dates.

[Ralph Spears]

Just the GR70x15 steel belted radials had that problem

[Pro Stock John]

Wikipedia has an article about these tires, it's pretty interesting.