Tire Making Process

Interested in our tire making process? Great! There are really two ways to make a white wall radial tire. You can do it while you’re actually making the tire or you can add the white wall to a finished tire as a final step. Remember, white rubber is just ornamental and has nothing to do with strength or performance. The advantage to adding it after the tire is made is that you can put a whitewall or color stripe on any tire you want, including 17″, 18″ and 20″ tires — and with much tighter quality control. The versatility is endless and tires are all current production. This is how we do it at Diamond Back. We’re simply the “final step”.

We start by mounting the new tire on a special machine that spins it at high speed. Using our own attachments, we rough up the sidewall surface so it is no longer perfectly smooth. Because of the accuracy of our preparatory machine, and because it turns at such a high RPM, any abnormalities of the tire can be spotted immediately. Because we use major manufacturers our rejection rate is near zero.

An entire section of our plant is devoted to the vulcanization equipment that makes the white wall a permanent part of the tire. Because the vulcanization process is so effective, if you tried to separate the white wall from the tire afterward, the tire itself would become damaged. It’s a marriage that lasts forever…a very permanent bond. So if you forget everything else, just remember that once the white wall is vulcanized to the tire, it’s on there forever (just try pulling one off the tire sometime).

After vulcanization, the material has to be trimmed to the exact desired width, depending on what you order. Whether it be a 3 ¾” white wall for a ’58 Cadillac, or a 3/8” redline for a ’65 Corvette it makes no difference. The fronts and rears can be matched in white wall width even if your tires are different sizes (as with hot rod big & little combinations). That’s the nice part about trimming each white wall or redline to order. We can also ensure that whitewalls widths are proportionately correct front and rear. For example – a smaller front tire will have the same percentage of white wall on the sidewall as a larger rear tire, and even though the front and rear whitewalls will be of different widths, they remain proportionately correct and aesthetically pleasing to all admirers of your ride!

All of our finishers are equipped with laser guides so that all widths are held to close tolerances. Once the trimming is complete, a series of finishing steps in the final process makes them nice and smooth.

Another advantage to high speed finishing is that it immediately shows us if there’s any kind of problem with the tire’s trueness (runout). The operator can spot it right away and he simply rejects the tire. It seldom happens.