Where can I find 175/80/13 tires for my 86?

[1p3bp]

So I'm ready to tag and drive this 86 Reliant wagon but I can't find any tires. It has 175/80/13 on it that are rotted. Only ones I'm finding are trailer tires. Some tire shops have tired but not that size but shorter. What does everyone do for tires?

[seattle smitty]

I had to get a 185/70R-13 tire for a mid-'80s Toyota Camry (turbo-diesel, very rare), and learned that any 13" and even 14" tires are becoming hard to get. So when I found a set of four at Les Schwab, I bought them all, and was told that they were unlikely to have any more. This suggests to me that if any of us expects ever to need these orphan tires for our orphan cars, it might be wise to get them now. Same story with parts, get 'em while you still can.

[89ARIES]

Hello Seattle Smitty. You know, I love all old cars, and the Colt Vista is dying out fast. My brother still has his, and after four months, I finally got him to get some work done
on his car, with the new head I got him. Tragically, it seems the San Francisco Bay Area must have been the premier center on the West Coast for surviving Colt Vista wagons,
because three wagons were just destroyed over there in the local junkyards in the last two months. This is in the year 2015 where I have not seen one wagon on the road, or even
one for sale. People are hauling them out and whacking them. Unfortunately, too many K-car owners did the same to the 82 LeBaron Sedan, which is now extinct in California.
Now, the defunct board is based on the same php platform as this club. All one of you needs to do is go through all the usernames, which I am sure one of you can do, and make a spreadsheet for me with just emails. The emails are the only hope for keeping the club going. I could then either run the old page or set-up another page and email invitations to those usernames to join. I can't run the Vista blog full time, but at least we'd have something going online to keep the car alive, even if it is just 100 cars, and people would have a place to go and remember the historical Colt Vista. What do you say?

This is all for free, and I only offer because I want there to be a chance that at least one or two wagons will still be on the road by 2020. Heck its better than the Vista wagon being extinct like some
of our K-cars. Most of our surviving K-cars are convertibles now, as that is what most people seem to prefer. At least we have survivors out of 3,000,000 K-Cars to choose from, of which I estimate
to be about 30,000 left today. Folks of this club, it is about helping one another, to save our old cars from the government and encouraging people to save the classic car hobby in America. Unless
you have no other choice, for the love of MIKE, PLEASE do not give into greed or fear mongering and crush your car without a 2nd thought. You are destroying a piece of irreplaceable history. See any 1934
woodies around, I think not. People need to realize all cars between 1980-1989 are now irreplaceable, not just "old" cars.

Guy
818-219-2587

[seattle smitty]

Now, the defunct board is based on the same php platform as this club. All one of you needs to do is go through all the usernames, which I am sure one of you can do, and make a spreadsheet for me with just emails.
Guy
818-219-2587

Guy, you are one in a million.

But remember, I'm about as dumb as a man can be about computers and still do this. I don't know from php platforms, and can barely guess at what a spreadsheet might be, and sure don't know how to set one up. I'll give you a call and maybe you can explain it. Does this mean you can access our abandoned Vista site? I can't get anything out of Alan Moore on this.

I don't even know yet how to post photos, or I might show you guys some shots, just for your amusement, of the c.1975 Chrysler NASCAR blue-box ignition I took off my shelf and adapted to an even older Sears Suburban garden tractor (incidently, there are even a couple of little user groups for these little tractors!! If somebody here in interested, one of them is Vintage Sears Garden Tractors, http://www.vsgt.aforumfree.com/

By this point, I don't have a whole lot of emotional capital invested in whether the Vistas disappear completely. What discourages me is that I spent a lot of hours writing out pretty good technical descriptions of typical Vista problems and of fixes for those problems. Pages and pages worth. A smart young guy from your area, Abe Nasher, writing as "mitsubishikid," also added a lot of great info on parts interchangability among various Mitsubishi vehicles of that decade, with ideas on performance upgrades via engine parts swaps. Poof, all gone. The idea of starting a new blog, without that collection of mini-essays by Abe and me, doesn't appeal to me very much, because I really don't want to go through all of those explanations again, no. I thought we had a damned good little site going, and don't know that I care to get back into it unless that site can be brought back whole. I like to think it is stored in somebody's harddrive somewhere, but I can't find this out. The server (I guess that's what it's called??) for coltvista.com was some outfit in Texas, where Alan Moore lived at the time. I have their contact info in my notes somewhere, but just cannot find them. Nor can I get this out of Alan Moore, whom I hear from possibly once a year.

I don't know if the type could be saved by getting the old site back up and running. The Vista had some weak points, especially in the shifting of the tranny and transfer case, and with the emissions-related "jet-valves" in the engine, and eventually these problems disable all of these cars. Since the Vistas seemed to owned only by soccer-moms and skiers and other folk who know nothing about cars, when their Vista stops running, it's not worth spending $1200 at a shop to save a $1200 car. These owners, by far the majority, are unlikely to search for a user-group that primarily caters to the few owners who have some level of mechanical ability. Too bad, because our site had all the information needed to fix the problems of the car . . . permanently. In building my own car, I learned things not even known by a good local transmission shop that had rebuilt some of those units, and I laid it all out in the site.

1p3bp, Guy and I sure did manage to hijack your tire thread. Guy, maybe you can pull our digression out of here and paste it in some more appropriate spot . . . ???

[85MP]

So I'm ready to tag and drive this 86 Reliant wagon but I can't find any tires. It has 175/80/13 on it that are rotted. Only ones I'm finding are trailer tires. Some tire shops have tired but not that size but shorter. What does everyone do for tires?

Hi, I just checked the passenger car tire availability over here in Europe. These are still offered in Germany:

Uniroyal rallye 380 175/80 R13 86T (BSW or WSW)
Nankang N745 175/80 R13 86S
Toyo 310 175/80 R13 86T
Maxxis MA1 175/80 R13 86S (BSW or WSW, quite popular over here because they are available with white side walls)

There are some tires with C rating (commercial -> vans), too.

I am not sure if those can be ordered in the US. If your tire shop carries one of the brands it might be a good idea to have him check if he can special order them.

Hendrik

[mkjohnson39]

Tire Discounters have the tires. They are made in China.
There is a store in Chillicothe, OH.
There is also a store in The Raleigh/Durham area among others.
I have 175/80 R13 whitewalls on my car.
E=mail me for specifics mkjohnson39@yahoo.com

[seattle smitty]

To the O.P., looking at a chart, and if you are not a purist and are willing to change to 14" rims, a 175/70R-14 appears to have the same outside diameter as your original tires. They're wider profile for better grip, but not excessively wide or juvenile-looking or hard-riding, and are a good upgrade from those skinny, dorky-looking originals. And they should be a little easier to find. These tires will work best if the 14" rims are also an inch wider than the original 13" rims probably were (I'm not a K-car owner and don't know).

[c330keith]

To the O.P., looking at a chart, and if you are not a purist and are willing to change to 14" rims, a 175/70R-14 appears to have the same outside diameter as your original tires. They're wider profile for better grip, but not excessively wide or juvenile-looking or hard-riding, and are a good upgrade from those skinny, dorky-looking originals. And they should be a little easier to find. These tires will work best if the 14" rims are also an inch wider than the original 13" rims probably were (I'm not a K-car owner and don't know).

I have 3 sets of used 175 80 13 tires

[mkjohnson39]

TOWN FAIR TIRES in the New England states, USA have about 90 in stock.
I just bought 2 at 55 dollars per. However; They do not ship......
I drove from Ohio to Danbury, Connecticut to buy them.
203 792 1829: If you know someone here they can ship them for
you, have a go.

[mkjohnson39]

DID YOU CALL AND GET THE TIRES?