canadiankodiak700
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2019
- Posts
- 1,055
- Reaction score
- 989
- Location
- Northern Ontario, Canada
- Ram Year
- 2019
- Engine
- 3.7L Pentastar
So all the thousands of retreads sold by my Dad's business in the '50s and '60s with all the discussions of what happens when a tire "blows" in the mold and all the discussions of why certain casings actually fit into a mold for a different size were just fabricated? Your description is of a process that I don't recognize at all, suggesting that it came along after that time. I was in one of the smaller retreading shops and I have seen the molds used in the '50s. I have seen at least hundreds of failed retreads, too, and if the process had been what you describe, it would have been evident, not only from underlying material, but from the existence of the splice. Bottom line: other manufacturers of "remolded" tires state outright that it is a retread. BTW, "recap" and "retread" are synonyms. There was a process back in my day that was a "top cap" versus a "full cap." They were both retreads/recaps and there's no getting around that.
Edit: I recall that when a tire blew out in the mold, it was returned to us. It would have all of the little "hairs" of rubber still on it where tread rubber flowed into the vents in the mold. Since the tire was junk, they did not put it through the trimming process.
Here is a very good description of how things are today: https://www.tirereview.com/revisiting-consumer-retreads/
not calling thoes stories fabricated at all, but i cansay there is erros facts that they wouldnt have known then. a tires blowing in the chamber wasn't poor materials or poor cap buil like they used to think, its gasses trapped in the porus rubber casings, from idiots using aresols such as ether or even gas to pop a tire on the rim. in the retread chamber with all the heat, it causes disastrous effects. our retread plant sufferd a 300k repair bill fom one 37" super swamper that had been mounted with black spray paint, and didn't get noticed before going in th chamber. blew chamber door completey off and 30ft across the plant into the side of anothr chamber and took out 2 buffing machines. very expensive lesson..... all tires went through 'the sniffer' after that, not just manual and mri.
yes I agree "recap" and "retread" are synonyms, but a "remold" is a bit more complex process, and any decent remold or a recap company will not interchange the terms. it's the very reason the two are rarely done by the same company.in the 70s and 80s a few cap companies ventured into remolding, but the process yeilded some horrible looking and performing results. garbage that was barely fit for an old farm truck in the felds, let alone a public road. today, the process is so advanced, it's comparable to a new tire.