Vintage Mystery Tire

[HingsingM37]

Ok crew, Heres a unique one. I found this wheel and tire in the rubble of the old BF Goodrich factory in Akron in the late 1980's. It is semi-pnuematic on a 16" mag rim. The outer wall resembles a NDT and the raised center tread a regular highway tire.
The odd thing is the rim is stamped "Firestone", yet I found this in the Goodrich factory? My brother-in-law is a tire engineer for Bridgestone-Firestone and has been in the biz for 40 years, he said he has never seen the like, nor has he been able to find anything in the Firestone archives. It looks as if it were off a concept car? I am going to clean it up and take it to the car shows next summer as a conversation piece. It may be time to call History Detectives...

exptire1.JPG (97.48 KiB) Viewed 862 times

exptire2.JPG (83.46 KiB) Viewed 862 times

[MSeriesRebuild]

Tire and rim is a new one on me too.

I have some friends who work at the local Michelin plant who are into old stuff. They may have a clue or possibly know a direction to look.

[k8icu]

Just a wild guess but I'm thinking that it is probably a prototype/mockup wheel that they were messing around with. Never meant for the public, just something they were playing with. Yep History Dectives sounds like a good place to start...

[Tanner]

Measure the wheel bolt pattern & Compare to existing known patterns: http://rockcrawler-mrt.com/boltpatternref.html

It isn't uncommon for a manufacturer to have samples of competitor products on their site for review... I do it frequently!

'Tanner'

[CTgreen]

Try finding pictures of old concept cars and trucks on the internet or in books. Maybe you will recognize the wheel and tread? H.