Red Band Portawalls - Any good?

[RA40tony]

Was looking at the fifty six delux webshop and seen these:



Any idea if they are any good? Do they look ok?
How do you fit them? deflate the tyre, slip them on?
Any risk of wearing away the sidewall?

Finally, whats to stop them flapping around when u hooning about in the car?

Thinking they could look cool on the celica with the gunmetal alloys.

Thanks

[Seth]

Jan 21, 2009 14:46:01 GMT RA40tony said:

Any idea if they are any good? Do they look ok?

Yep, if fitted well to tyres that are the right kind of size.

How do you fit them? deflate the tyre, slip them on?

Yep.

Any risk of wearing away the sidewall?

Yep! Rubber grease can help minimise this.

Finally, whats to stop them flapping around when u hooning about in the car?

They're quite rigid once in place. Longevity depends entirely on how well you fit them, how you drive, how much you drive and if you curb them badly.

[RA40tony]

Thanks Seth!

Driving will be not too much and quite fast! ;p
As for curbing.... with the newly refurbished and painted alloys, i'll be parking a few feet away from the pavement.

Any ideas if the 14 inch ones will fit ok on 14x7s with 185/55/14?

[retrowagen1234]

cant immagine that being a problem . they have a curve in them for the sidewall and your tyres will have a slight bulge if not flat with the rim so should be just about right, and the 55 profile is quite small so should work quite well as the red bands have a smaller flap than say... white wall

[Zapp Brannigan]

I have the white band ones on my Alpine (identical to red band apart from the colour). Compared to the Atlas whitewall flaps, they are a PITA to fit! They are much less grippy and tend to be pushed out as you re-inflate the tyre. You really have to scrub the area between the tyre bead and the rim so that's it's spotlessly clean - I did this with copious amounts of parafin and water. All in all it took me about 20 hours to fit four of them and my fingers were ruined for about a week afterwards. That said they do look very good and you'd have to look close to see that they're not the real thing!

[Seth]

As retrowagen said re. fitment.

Have a photo.

[RA40tony]

Cool!!! Thanks again.

I should be fitting them at the same time as I fit new tyres so they should be clean anyway. They do look damn good though!!

[Zapp Brannigan]

When you have tyres fitted they may well use the orange lubricant stuff....you will need to clean all that away first. Once on my Beetle I had to have a valve replaced and it was a devil to get the whitewall back on because of the orange lubricant the tyre people used. Then when I was coming back from the Ace Cafe that night the whitewall came off while I was going 70mph and made a hell of a racket....I thought a wheel had fallen off!

[Graham]

i had white wide bands on my 400e truck and found they sat better once we fitted inner tubes

[RetroMat]

i was wondering about these, i'd like white bands for my hiace. As its got nice thick comercial tyres on it i imagine the side wall wear would be minimal. You can also buy white wall tyre paint, steady hand required thou
www.frost.co.uk/item_Detail.asp?productID=8667&frostProductName=Whitewall%20Tyre%20Paint%20(250ml)

[RA40tony]

Wow, thanks for all the replies.

So looks like I'm gonna go ahead and order them, fit the tyres to the wheels, clean the lubricant off, then fit the red bands.... sounds easy ;D

[Zapp Brannigan]

It is easy in principal, but it can take a lot of time to get it exactly right (sorry, not trying to sound negative, it's well worth the effort). Once you've managed to get the trim fitted to the tyre you will often find that when inflated it will start to bulge in places. The only thing you can do then is deflate the tyre and try to re-seat the trim. If you get a bulge in the same place when you try to re-inflate again, then you will need to clean the rim more thoroughly.

Sometimes they go on first time with no trouble, but sometimes they are a PITA. One essential piece of kit you will need is a compressor (either one of those little cigar liter powered ones like I've got or a big one) as if you have to deflate and re-inflate constantly with a foot-pump you'll not be able to walk for 3 months!

[RA40tony]

No problem, its great that you are giving me all that info. I've got both a small compressor and large.

[dan74]

let me know how you get on mate, i want to do this as well.

[captainwow]

Mark (from '56Deluxe) is a good mate of mine,he runs them on his bay (which is the one tehy're taken on in the top pic actually) and he's not had a problem with them.
It's very dependant on tyre size,I've had 2 sets of Atlas whitewalls from him for my Passat,first set was fine til I trashed them on a kerb (along with a Moon!) but the second set I couldn't get o fit right.
That's down to me tho,not him,all the stuff he sells is top quality.