Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area Driveline Wheel & Tire Width

We have made great progress on my friend’s 3100. The painted truck is fully assembled and runs well.

The one major item left is wheels and tires. I have done quite a few searches. Obviously there are lots of ideas and opinions about bias or radial, classic or modern, tubes or tubeless, etc. The owner’s preference is to run a set of modern radial tires on the stock wheels.

The original 6.00 x 16 tire has about 6.8” section width. That translates to about 175 mm. The limitation is that there are almost no 16” tires in that width range. The few that I can find do not have enough land capacity and are too small in diameter. One other limitation we have is that we cannot handle much if any diameter increase due to the garage door height.

From a practical standpoint how wide a modern radial tire can be used on the standard 16x4 wheel? My concern is the distortion of the tire profile and crowning of the tread due to the narrow bead width.

Do you know what year the wheel is for/from?

The 1954 16" rims are 4.5" x 16"

Cooper Tire SRM II LT215/85R16 black truck radials on my Suburban.

A 215/85R16 Radial will work well on a 4.5" wheel/rim.

I forgot that detail in my original post. This is a 1949 3100 so the rims are 16x4. I cannot remember if they changed to 4 1/2" in 1950 or 1951.

Did you try Coker tire? Expensive, but if you must keep your old rims...

Hi Gord,

I agree that the owner might have to adjust expectations. The solutions are to either get different wheels or pay for tires from a source like Coker.

From my perspective I would definitely be concerned using anything wider than a 205 on a 4" rim. 195 is really the maximum I prefer.

I have a friend running 225/70 -16's on 4 1/2" rims on a '54 3100. They do bulge quite a bit. I agree with the match between your 215/85 on a 4 1/2" rim.

I just found a tire on Tire Rack that's pretty close to a 600-16 (185mm wide) that would probably work on a 4" wide wheel. They do caution that it's a summer only tire and shouldn't be driven at freezing temperatures, because the compound can crack. To me that would be a definite no-go, but may be an option for guys in warmer climates like SoCal, Texas or other southern states.
Link [tirerack.com]

4.5" 1/2 ton wheels in 1951 [chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com]

3 sizes of 1/2 ton wheels in 1949 [chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com] (and in 1950)

Kevin,
In the specs for the tire you linked, they recommend 5 to 6.5 in wide rims. Don't know what happens if the tires are installed on rims outside the recommended range. Even if they work OK, could some lawyer make an issue of it in case of an accident?

Hey, some lawyer would probably make an issue of it even if they were on the right width wheels.
The 215/85R16 size that Tim mentioned would have the same issue. Other than the Coker 600-16's, there are no modern tire sizes that I can find that are recommended to fit on 4" or 4.5" wide wheels.

The old rule of thumb used to be to run a wheel width that was 75%-80% as wide as the tire footprint. On a metric radial that would make a 195/85R16 about the right size. A 215MM footprint would be 20MM (just under an inch) wider than optimum. That's not way off, but it might result in an oddball wear pattern of the tread.
Jerry