9.00-13 Tyres

Originally posted by Tony Smith
Its bad enough facing police/insurance/licencing issues that risk keeping us off the road, but to overcome those and then not being able to move because your tyres are FBR- well we might as well give it all up.

That indeed is the very real worry. When push comes to shove most of us can fabricate or otherwise get around all the other problems except tyres.

The WWII rim sizes themselves seem to be obsolete and non-commercial sizes today. In 16" there is some popularity because of the quantity of old LR's about but these are either the 6.5/7.5 sizes or specialist and wholly uncommensurate off-road competition stuff. There is some Michelin stuff though and here still a fair amount of 9.00 x 16 ex-mil NDCC as used on LR 101's.

Trawling Google for simply 9.00 x 16 and the like produced most responses from Oz and NZ, it seems Simex are Oz based now http://www.simextyre.com/ but don't list the ST24 at all.

We have found 9.00 x 13 in a wavy tread pattern, Brian has these on his Bofors behind the F30 LAAT; they are definitely "Agricultural" and purely made for farm trailer use. We'd not want to run these on a truck though for many reasons.

The mil 20" size too is rare, and I need to match tyres for circumference also, however, anything over a few tens of miles is cheaper by truck than throwing UK petrol in a 623 at some 2.5mpg.

I'll test the water with the odd-ball suppliers here and am still awaiting any response from MRF after sending them an enquiry via their site. http://www.mrftyres.com/

I guess at some time we may have to fabricate wheels that do take the nearest current size that is acceptable, this likely means parting the centres out on the lathe and welding back into a modern rim, a huge task with a divided type too. The process fills me with horror frankly, the potential for complete mobile disaster doesn't bear thinking about.

I reckon tyres are going to be the disaster area and we'll be hearing about it more and more.

R.