Wide Whitewalls on a Ratsun budget!

[fisch]

Want wide whitewalls without paying $600+shipping for a set? Don't want to paint them on or use porta walls? Here is something you can try.

 

First go to the salvage yard and pick up a set of thin strip white wall tires. (I've heard white letter tires will work too.)

 

I got mine for $50 for all four with pleanty of tread on them.

 

 

So it turns out there is a wider strip of white on either side of the thin white strip! So grab your favorite power sander and start sanding. I used a drum sander bit attached to my drill, and also did a little with a dremel tool, but the surface can get more uneven with such a little tool.

 

 

I learned that if you first sand down the entire raised little white strip flush with the black wall then keep going to the wider strip, your surface is more even. It takes a while per tire so try to keep that drill moving evenly around the tire so one spot doesn't get too low prematurly.

 

The second thing I learned is that if you try to retain the outer edge of the original whitewall as a guide and shave from that point in toward the center, your outer circle will stay a crisp circle. Sure you could gain a little more white wall if you exposed the entire hidden white strip, but your edges would be more uneven as a tradeoff.

 

Here is the finished sanding of four tires. Two are a smidge widerwhite than the other, that is because I exposed the entire white strip on those. But again on close inspection the outer line is a little more wavy on those two.

 

 

Clean up! Now, where the white band came together when originally constructed, it will be a bit uneven and possibly will have a slight crack of black where the two ends of the white rubber joined. My fix for this at the moment is a little oil paint.

 

Lamp Black

Underpainting white

 

Here is the blem, followed by a shot if the exact same place after the repair.

 

I mixed a tid bit of Lamp black into the white to match the color of the whitewall. And used the lamp black pure to replicate the color of the tire. (You can also use this to even out some of the wavy lines!)

 

The repair

 

And there it is folks! A shot of the finished wide white.

 

 

 

This is a neat solution to painted on whites or portawalls. After all this is real whitewall. It is EASY!! And it only cost $50 for 4 tires! WHo cares if it is a little wavy. If this aint a ratsun solution I don't know what is.

 

Also there are videos of folks doing this out there on youtube.

[hacked521]

I tried this and it works really great. I think you sent me a link to a youtube video. I wish i had the budget to go buy some salvage yard tires and i would throw that set on my truck instead of the little tiny whitewalls. By the way white letter tires also do have the wide white strip. Thanks for the write up.

[521Lvr]

I.ve heard but never seen.

Awesome job!

[fisch]

I tried this and it works really great. I think you sent me a link to a youtube video. I wish i had the budget to go buy some salvage yard tires and i would throw that set on my truck instead of the little tiny whitewalls. By the way white letter tires also do have the wide white strip. Thanks for the write up.

 

Thanks guys. Hey hacked, why not do it to the tires you have on there now?

[fryanbacon]

this is super cool!

I'm so clumsy though, I'd probably screw it up. :eek:

[Guest DatsuNoob]

this is super cool!

I'm so clumsy though, I'd probably screw it up. :eek:

 

you could probably get away with lining the outside edge of the whitewall with some masking tape to prevent messing up that line. Double it up. Good write up! I'm eager to try it.

[fisch]

you could probably get away with lining the outside edge of the whitewall with some masking tape to prevent messing up that line. Double it up. Good write up! I'm eager to try it.

 

Totally could use masking tape on the outside of the original edge. As I progressed I kinda held my sander at an angle so that the outer white edge was still raised a little above the black. That made sure the sander stayed off of the black as much as possible.

 

But really, as you can tell above from the two that I exposed the entire white strip on, the waviness isn't that bad from 10 feet away, even fully sanded. And a little oil paint could clean up some of the bigger discrepancies. And understand, the sander doesnt make the edge-line wavy, it is just the way the tire is made. The white rubber under there is a litle uneven, that's all.

 

Get the biggest drum sanding bit you can and go for it. I've also seen folks do it with a da sander, but I don't have one of those myself. The drum sander I used was just about the same width as the final exposed whitewall. Seemed to work great, especially if you are trying to retain that outer line from the original strip.

 

 

Hell for $10 to $12 a tire, how can you go wrong? I tried it on a bald tire I had laying around. And that gave me the confidance to do the real thing.

 

Rock da whites!

[Pacific coast Datsun]

Fisch you are the man!!! Ive always wanted to do that on my HB tires but didnt know how to make it happen. I have a few old tires i can practice on. I wonder how far out the whitewall will go if you keep sanding? With a few basic tools look at what you get...love it! Thanks.

[fiveNdime]

You guys must have never seen the ones us VW guys put on our cars. They are just flaps of rubber that you put on when you mount your tires. Then you can put them on any tire you have thats the same rim size. They work great, and much more time friendly. And you cant tell there fake.

http://myvwbug.wordpress.com/2007/09/

[fisch]

Fisch you are the man!!! Ive always wanted to do that on my HB tires but didnt know how to make it happen. I have a few old tires i can practice on. I wonder how far out the whitewall will go if you keep sanding? With a few basic tools look at what you get...love it! Thanks.

 

Thanks pac! The two tires on the right (in the pic w/ all 4 against the garage door) are fully exposed. I also had to shave off all the writing on those as the white wall traveled just under the words, so it all had to go!

 

Though I imagine how much white matters on make too. I've done three different makes, and they all seem pretty close.

 

I am using oil paint to fix and blems and waviness, but I imagine real white wall paint could be cool for the blems too. As long as it matched the color of your white!

 

I will have to report back as to how the oil paint holds up, but since it is such a small area you have to repair, it'd be easy enough to touch up down the road!

[LAYEDOUTB2K]

You guys must have never seen the ones us VW guys put on our cars. They are just flaps of rubber that you put on when you mount your tires. Then you can put them on any tire you have thats the same rim size. They work great, and much more time friendly. And you cant tell there fake.

http://myvwbug.wordpress.com/2007/09/

 

those are the porta walls that fisch mentioned in his original post

[fiveNdime]

They work great. Cost a little more then 50 bucks though.

 

Fisch, thanks for the great write-up on how to do this with paint and free time!

[AZhitman]

Fisch, you freakin' ROCK.

[djmoreron]

thanks for posting this thread. it looks like a better alternative to painting.

 

i like the way they did it here, slightly different method. just turn down the volume to avoid the music :D

 

[hacked521]

Thanks guys. Hey hacked, why not do it to the tires you have on there now?

 

I would its just, im way to afraid to screw up these tires. I tried it out on an old set and dont get me wrong it turned out looking exactly like a set of coker whitewalls. Im just too chicken-sh** to do it do a brand new set.

[Llittle_Llama]

so why are whitewalls so $$$!?!

[]2eDeYe]

Because there is less rubber. Same reason low profile tires are more expensive....

 

Must make sense to somebody, just not me...

[ggzilla]

What a cool idea. It looks great. Viva Le Ratsun.

[fisch]

so why are whitewalls so $$$!?!

 

And they are made in much fewer quantities. Supply and demand. If everyone were running wide whitewalls, they'd make more of them, and that'd bring the cost down.

[Llittle_Llama]

well im glad you came up with this! i'll never run them, but DOWN WITH THE CORPORATE MACHINE!!!!!!1111!1!!!!!!!111111

[Bleach]

everyone buys gas and that doesn't bring the price down! :D lol

[fisch]

everyone buys gas and that doesn't bring the price down! :D lol

 

Ha! So true! But wait, if there is less gas in the world and more people who want it, wouldn't that make the price go up? Now I am confusing myself!

[1200wag]

Fisch said:

If everyone were running wide whitewalls, they'd make more of them, and that'd bring the cost down.

__________________

 

 

If everyone was running wide whitewalls; they wouldn't be quite as cool, would they... Maybe black walls would be cool, and they'd be dearer :blink:

[irsa76]

I joked with my wife I need white walls on the minivan.

She didn't see the humor. And stil hasn't given me a budget for a new toy.

[DISLEXICDIME]

double j tires in on mlk in north portland used to make wide white walls out of white letter tires i wonder if they still do it