OUCH!!! Is It Money Wasted If You've Learned Something?

Well....this is enough to make a grown man cry! With 6 kids in the house, Ol' Scruffy doesn't have a lot of $$$$ to spend on his Chevy. So anytime I can collect a few coins out of the couch cushions, I try to spend it wisely on my car.

Well, I REALLY like the look of wide whitewalls, but can not believe the cost of new Cokers! UNREAL....They are just too far out of Ol' Scruffy's budget at this "stage of the game".

So you can imagine my excitement when I talked with a friend about her portawalls on her 53 Chevy. Now grant it, they were not 3" wides...I think they are an inch and 3/4, but she said she hadn't had any problems and she put them on radials.

So....I dropped 60 clams + shipping on a set of 15x3s. When I got them installed THEY LOOKED AWESOME WHEN THE CAR WAS ON THE JACK STANDS! (see pictures). The problems began when I lowered the car onto the ground and put the cars full weight on the radials. As you can see from the picture below, the portawalls buckled.

I've always believed that necessity was the mother of invention, so I began to think of ways to "fix" the problem. I thought that if I could just adhere the portawalls to the sidewalls of the radials with a strong adhesive, I could fix the problem. Well, I tried "Amazing Goop", I tried Superglue, and I tried an epoxy formulated specially for rubber. The first two pulled away when the car's weight was on the tires. I thought I had fixed the problem with the third until I took the car out last night for the MAIDEN VOYAGE on the new portawalls.

I SIMPLY drove the car around a "country block"....approximately 4 miles...and you can see the results! The epoxy held in some places and the portawalls actually tore away from the radials. OUCH! The outcome was enough to make a grown man cry!

Now I've got to figure out what to do with this mess. I've been planning to go to two shows this Saturday. I may have to break all four tires back down off the rims, and try to scrape the remaining portawalls off the radials. If I do get Ol' Blue ready for Saturday, you will know I didn't have much luck if I've reversed the tires on the rims and I've got only black sidewalls showing!

Lesson learned: Wide whitewalls do not work well with radial tires. Even if you have wide sidewall radials and inflate them to maximum pressure!

On a positive note.....my 15 year old daughter got the wires off her jaw this week. Avid readers may recall that she was hit by a ball at a minor league baseball game back on July 12th, breaking her jaw in 2 places. She has had her jaw wired shut since. She's lost 20 lbs. through the ordeal, but continues to be in good spirits.

Still no signs of the minor league team taking any responsibility in the matter. Looks like Ol' Scruffy will be low on $$$ for some time while he's paying all these medical bills!....which really sucks because I just learned about a potential T-bucket project that's for sale in the area.