Retreads from Tire Recappers

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Originally Posted By: Chris142
Originally Posted By: expat
I used to work in a retread plant in BC back in the 80's doing Hot caps (like you have) and Bandag.

I guess standards vari across the industry. But our plant did not give any consideration to quality or safety. Case in point: When buffing a tire (stripping the oil rubber off)
you will find rust spots where the tread was punctured part way. You are required to grind out the rust and fill the void with new rubber.
But sometimes you put too much time into a casing only to find it full of rust.
Discarding the tire would cost money, so we were told to put the casing aside until the buffer blades were worn out, then strip out the steel belts on those junk casings with the worn out blades. I hated doing this, it was quite dangerous, steel belt wire would fly everywhere!

After the belt was removed, a layer of Bandag tread gum was wrapped around the casing to make-up, then wraped with new rubber along with the others on the orbitread machine.

Now, if that were not bad enough, the extra rubber would need extra time to cure in the mould, but 'time is money' and the guy running the Hot line needed to work (literally) by seconds when switching moulds. So more often than not all tires were cured the same!

There were lots of other dodges too.

They all look good when they come out of the mould and get the sidewalls painted. ;-)
how does steel belts incased in rubber rust?



A sharp object penetrants the rubber to the depth of the steel belt, water then enters causing rust. As the rust progresses more water wicks in along the steel braids.
 
Originally Posted By: Piston_slap
Originally Posted By: expat
I used to work in a retread plant in BC back in the 80's doing Hot caps (like you have) and Bandag.

I guess standards vari across the industry. But our plant did not give any consideration to quality or safety. Case in point: When buffing a tire (stripping the oil rubber off)
you will find rust spots where the tread was punctured part way. You are required to grind out the rust and fill the void with new rubber.
But sometimes you put too much time into a casing only to find it full of rust.
Discarding the tire would cost money, so we were told to put the casing aside until the buffer blades were worn out, then strip out the steel belts on those junk casings with the worn out blades. I hated doing this, it was quite dangerous, steel belt wire would fly everywhere!

After the belt was removed, a layer of Bandag tread gum was wrapped around the casing to make-up, then wraped with new rubber along with the others on the orbitread machine.

Now, if that were not bad enough, the extra rubber would need extra time to cure in the mould, but 'time is money' and the guy running the Hot line needed to work (literally) by seconds when switching moulds. So more often than not all tires were cured the same!

There were lots of other dodges too.

They all look good when they come out of the mould and get the sidewalls painted. ;-)


Well there you go! Management imposed what it needed to stay open and the sidewalls made Retail Happy! I'd say you were batting 1,000.[color:#009900][/COLOR]
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We used to work a two shift system. It was made clear by managment that when thigs were slow the shift with the lower production would be laid off.

We would do all sorts of things to boost our production, or screw the other shift.

It really was Dog eat dog!

Eventually we called to go union, but as soon as we did the owners closed the plant.

Walking out of that s' hole was the best thing that I ever did.
 
There is a lot of negative information about retreads and I want to find out first hand if it's true or not. Back in the 80's when I was a kid my dad was a owner operator truck driver and used retreads on his drive tires and had good luck with them. I think 70-80% of all commercial trucks today are running them, so surely the bonding process had to improve. I'll find out as time passes as I'm running retreads and bead to bead remolded tires on my Excursion and Dodge D250. If they work out well I'll be running them on my F-350 as well when I put it back on the road. I'll do 6 months reviews and post them for fun.:)
 
Originally Posted By: A310
There is a lot of negative information about retreads and I want to find out first hand if it's true or not. Back in the 80's when I was a kid my dad was a owner operator truck driver and used retreads on his drive tires and had good luck with them. I think 70-80% of all commercial trucks today are running them, so surely the bonding process had to improve. I'll find out as time passes as I'm running retreads and bead to bead remolded tires on my Excursion and Dodge D250. If they work out well I'll be running them on my F-350 as well when I put it back on the road. I'll do 6 months reviews and post them for fun.:)


I've had exceptionally good luck with the ones I've had or used. The Tire Recappers in TN look to make a nice product I'll probably buy a set from them in the future! Treadright has gotten expensive or doesn't have tires in the sizes I need anymore. I prefer the remolding process to the Bandag cap.

What engine in that 2000 Excursion that you've resurrected to take the place of the wounded F350?
 
Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3
Originally Posted By: A310
There is a lot of negative information about retreads and I want to find out first hand if it's true or not. Back in the 80's when I was a kid my dad was a owner operator truck driver and used retreads on his drive tires and had good luck with them. I think 70-80% of all commercial trucks today are running them, so surely the bonding process had to improve. I'll find out as time passes as I'm running retreads and bead to bead remolded tires on my Excursion and Dodge D250. If they work out well I'll be running them on my F-350 as well when I put it back on the road. I'll do 6 months reviews and post them for fun.:)


I've had exceptionally good luck with the ones I've had or used. The Tire Recappers in TN look to make a nice product I'll probably buy a set from them in the future! Treadright has gotten expensive or doesn't have tires in the sizes I need anymore. I prefer the remolding process to the Bandag cap.

What engine in that 2000 Excursion that you've resurrected to take the place of the wounded F350?

That's good to hear, Tire Recappers are about 25% cheaper than TreadWright and some times they have sales on 50% off. They had the size for our Dodge 235/85R16, but TreadWright has no stock at the moment so waiting for those tires to come in. I pick the excursion tires up tomorrow. The Excursion has the Triton V10, it runs very well with 177,000 miles and will soon sport a vintage MotorGuard M100 to help filter the oil.:) I did try to find a diesel model, but too expensive. I found this one for a great price and bought it.
 
I believe even commercial aircraft uses retreads.

I have never seen them on a passenger tire before, interesting.

The price for my sonata comes in at $66 each from that retread company, a budget tire from discount tire is $55.

It probably only makes sense to retread LT applications or commercial.
 
Back in the day, re-caps were the norm for cost conscious families. Then the radial thing happened and folks started getting 50,000 miles out of tires. By that time the carcasses were pretty much trash. However, Bruce's Tires in Oakland was still capping cheater slicks and all sorts of racing treads onto usable casings. Still a good deal for those of us who got hundreds of miles out tires, not thousands
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Then somewhere in the 80's the "rubber" changed and the casings started to become even more ozone and UV sensitive. Tread life stayed in the 35~50K range, but the sidewalls started to rot. Cracking and dyeing before the tread was gone ... I've had so many Michelins go bad sitting there, that I stopped buying them. I need most tires to be like tractor tires - good for 30 years. Many of my vehicles sit for extended periods before they have to go to work ...

Nowdays you have to very careful about the casings going under the new tread rubber. Michelin seams to be the worst. Toyo maybe the best as far as ozone and UV resistance ... But I'd want to have matched casings with no cracks before I'd consider re-caps.

That selection process would ad to the cost. So except for Treadright and other specialty caps, I dunno why we'd go there ... You can buy new cheapo Douglas tires from WM if you are hard up for $$ ...
 
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Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: A310
Originally Posted By: edwardh1
i see a lot of them, on the side of the road.


This is true, but if you look closely they may be virgin tires and not retreads.


All the ones that I've found are complete treads, with steel wires intact.

I would love to find just the tread, no belts, as cutting the rubber off the belts to make flipflops is an absolute pain.


If it has steel wire in it, it is NOT a cap.
 
The problem with retreading passenger car tires is that they were never designed for it. The used casing likely doesn't have enough life left in it to make it reliably retreadable. Besides, it is almost as expensive to retread a passenger car tires as it is to make a new one. As a result, these tires have to be priced well below new tires. That means that the retreader is likely to cut corners.

And, as a general rule, this includes LT tires. They also aren't designed to be retreaded and suffer from the same sorts of problems.

- EXCEPT -

that some of the steel body ply LT tires - like the Michelin XPS line - are made much like their larger cousins, the Medium Truck tires. They WERE designed to be retreaded, but their application is limited due to the tread pattern.

And the problem isn't adhering the retread to the casing - it is the casing itself.
 
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Originally Posted By: CapriRacer
The problem with retreading passenger car tires is that they were never designed for it. The used casing likely doesn't have enough life left in it to make it reliably retreadable. Besides, it is almost as expensive to retread a passenger car tires as it is to make a new one. As a result, these tires have to be priced well below new tires. That means that the retreader is likely to cut corners.

And, as a general rule, this includes LT tires. They also aren't designed to be retreaded and suffer from the same sorts of problems.

- EXCEPT -

that some of the steel body ply LT tires - like the Michelin XPS line - are made much like their larger cousins, the Medium Truck tires. They WERE designed to be retreaded, but their application is limited due to the tread pattern.

And the problem isn't adhering the retread to the casing - it is the casing itself.


You have a valid point that I never considered when researching the LT retread process. That might explain why the tires I got had such great casings. TireRecappers say they only use premium casings to retread, so I'm assuming like the casings I got, they only find low mileage casings? They had no scuffing and really looked like someone had handed in new tires and had them retreaded.
 
Originally Posted By: A310
You have a valid point that I never considered when researching the LT retread process. That might explain why the tires I got had such great casings. TireRecappers say they only use premium casings to retread, so I'm assuming like the casings I got, they only find low mileage casings? They had no scuffing and really looked like someone had handed in new tires and had them retreaded.


I would make the assumption that retreaders don't have access to any information about the tires they retread - that they collect casings and sort through them, rejecting those that have certain indicators. Further, the fact that they address the issue of casings in their advertising says to me that they are aware of the problem - and to alleviate the fears claim they only use *premium casings* - whatever that means.

Now I'm not saying retreaded LT tires experience lots of casing failures. What I am saying is that the risk seems to be higher. It would be nice if we had statistics to clear this up, but I'll bet even the retreaders have very little in the way of data.
 
Treadwright rejects more casings than they cap. I have used many, running right at the maximum pressure and weight, with no trouble.
 
I use 275/55/20 and their highway tread looks real good. Real close to a Michelin tread IMHO.

And they are $95.00 a piece!
 
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Originally Posted By: CKN
I use 275/55/20 and their highway tread looks real good. Real close to a Michelin tread IMHO.

And they are $95.00 a piece!


The 2 I bought were 10 ply LT tires 235/85/16 and they were $94.00 a piece. The car tires are less depending on the size, not sure about your tire size.
 
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