[68ragtop]

Sure enough. I found it. How does this break down?

LF81089 I know for sure its not 1989

Tire is filthy, but no cracks in the rubber at all. I haven't tried to clean it yet as I didn't want to damage the rubber.

[68ragtop]

I found this article:

http://anghelrestorations.com/upload...tires_v1.3.pdf

If this is true, the "L" would be for 1968, the "F" for April.

No clue on the rest of the digits. plant & serial number? what a complicated date code system

[Formulajones]

Yep that's the date code. F should be March. The year is 68. The other numbers are the plant it was manufactured like the Gadsen plant for example and so forth. Yes it's a pretty difficult date system for sure.

[68ragtop]

Well, the tire cleaned up amazingly well. Looks almost like new. No cracks in the rubber at all. It had a yellow print on it, that will probably be gone if I scrub it anymore. Also, two hand drawn circles that could have been from the dealer, or possibly a service center? Didn't see these when the tire was dirty,

[68ragtop]

Well, finally getting to a point where I need to restore the spare wheel. I rolled the dice & carefully removed the 49 year old tire. Amazingly it came of without one bit of damage, not even a bit of rubber removed when taking off the back bead (that's usually where they get damaged) I couldn't be happier. Hard to believe this tire is nearing its 50th birthday. Its in phenomenal shape!

The wheel is Feb 13th of 68 & the Tire is March of 68. Aside from the LF, does anybody know what the rest of the numbers mean on the tire date code.

Just curious.

[dataway]

I know the "MI" is the factory designation, there were "K" wheels (Kelsey Hays I think), and MI wheels which were .... I want to say "Michigan Wheel" or something like that. They are manufactured differently too. If you put a K wheel next to a MI wheel you can see the difference in the way they were stamped.

They were stamped on the inside? Steelies usually have the codes on the outside by the valve stem.

Not sure what the 849 is.

I still need a couple of HG code, MI factory, June dated steelies if anyone has them in GOOD shape.

[68ragtop]

I have what I "believe" is 1969 7" wheels on my rolling chassis now, But I have all the 6" wheels too. Might put some redlines on those. The wheel above & the others have "JC" stamped by the stems.

[68ragtop]

Now, can you breakdown the rest of this code on the tire?

Formulajones found the month & year from the post above a few months back, but wow, there are a lot of digits on these Goodyears.

Also I found it interesting that there was no silver overspray on the backside of the wheel from the front silver. Plenty of rust, but no silver. So it would seem maybe not all of them were painted the same way?

[dataway]

I'd bet that spares go in the car as one of the very last things, so could be they come from a different vendor even, different "pile" for sure, maybe even juggled around by the dealer for some reason. I wonder if they painted the spare more carefully because the owner was likely to see it more often? Were they mounted back side up in the trunk?

My guess is the extra digits are just a sequential unit number that ticked off every time they formed one in that particular machine.

[68ragtop]

Another thing I noticed on this spare is the primer gray side of the wheel is quite a bit lighter than the other wheels had. I already have the paint for the backside, so its going to be darker than it appears in the picture above. In fact its not much darker than the argent silver.

[north]

Rally wheels went face down and regular wheels face up

[68ragtop]

Originally Posted by north

Rally wheels went face down and regular wheels face up

Didn't realize that. here I thought all off them went face down.

[Ram4king]

I don't know if that's true. I have slot of original spares I took out of survivors and they were all mounted upside down. You can tell by the indents on the side of the tires because of the jack..

[Formulajones]

Yep, father bought his goat new with stock steel wheel dog dish. His spare has always been mounted face down since day one.

Actually, it's not even possible to mount the other way, I've tried it. The threaded rod isn't long enough to reach up through the jack base.

[north]

I took a look at the trunks of all my non-rally cars that I had trunk pictures of and everyone of them shows the spare face up. All these pics were from the ebay listing of the seller, not taken by me. I would imagine that the logic of face up is to protect the whitewall and to keep the contents of the trunk cleaner by avoiding contact with the filthy back side of a tire. Two of the cars are 69 LeMans and the rest are 69 fullsize.

[north]

Here are the Jacking instructions for both the 69 A and F bodies. Both state that spare is stored valve side up except the firebird one which says to lay face down if a rally wheel. I believe the A body rally wheel should also be face down also but the instructions don't mention it.

[north]

I don't have them handy but IIRC the assembly manuals have a sheet about this as well.

[Formulajones]

This may very well be documented in things like the AIM's and other factory paperwork, but it certainly wasn't always practiced in real applications, as my fathers car is proof of that. His car was even factory equipped with white walls, and yep, the white wall spare was (and still is) face down in the trunk. Like I mentioned, it won't mount the other way, GM didn't make the threaded stud long enough to counter the wheel offset. I tried it, simply because I thought it would be more aesthetically appealing to mount the white wall face up, but once the jack base is set on top, the stud is way too short, can't get the wing nut on. I'm certain other cars were also this way.

Kind of reminds me of Don Keefe years back when he didn't believe my father, who is the original owner of this car no less, that black tail panels were indeed done on some 69 GTO's. Of course we all found out later that this was in fact done That whole deal is a funny story in itself.

It's all good though. Some of these things aren't set in stone, and as more things come to light it will probably make more sense.

[north]

Yup, very possible that it went in wrong at the plant. Maybe the fact that it was a GTO was a factor; since most GTO’s had rally wheels the line worker put them in upside down on all goats?

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by north

Yup, very possible that it went in wrong at the plant. Maybe the fact that it was a GTO was a factor; since most GTO’s had rally wheels the line worker put them in upside down on all goats?

Could be. It's an early build car and has a couple of interesting things about it. I'm sure you're right that these plain wheels were meant to be mounted right side up.

Would the threaded J-hook have been a different length? I'm wondering when it went down the line if a shorter hook was installed and when it came time to put the spare in, it couldn't go in facing up so they just flipped it upside down and kept the line moving...??

I guess a lot of things can't be explained after nearly 50 years.

Here's some pics of the spare. Never been on the ground, still has original air in it, lol. You can see in one pic the white wall is stained a bit from the jack. Like you mentioned, if it could have been mounted face up it would have protected the white wall from that.