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Now, after reading the last digest postings I see what your problem is.
This subject is one that comes up about every 6 months and there is no real
consensus about the solution, so here goes my opinion:
Coker is not a tire manufacturing company, they are a marketing company of
specific niche tires for classic and/or specialty cars. They have their
tires made as private brands at other manufacturers plants -- a common
practice for most of the tire sellers in this country. They are sellers of
wide white wall tires, one of the only if not the only company who markets
WWW made the "real" way, that is with a wide white wall on the "green" tire
that is cured in the mold with the wide white wall showing. This is
important because separate unique rubber compounds have to be used around
and touching the white rubber so as not to stain the rubber. Some of the
tires that I have heard of stain quickly and that is because the dealer or
manufacturer takes a black wall tire and glues or attaches a white rubber
piece onto a normal black tire. That is what causes some if not all of the
staining or black bleeding on the white sidewall. Coker tires are made in
the proper manner so the bleeding and staining shouldn't happen.
Now to the other problem -- tread separation. I had two of my first set of
Coker tires separate on me at the end of last summer. I live in Texas and
drive the Interstates to and from Dallas a lot and therefore heat the tires
up. This is hard on any steel belted radial tire, but more especially a
heavy tire, and the Coker tires seem to be relatively heavy treaded tires.
But the most important thing about my tires was that they were manufactured
in 1997, sold to me in 1999 and developed the separations the last of 2000.
In talking to Coker, they all but admitted that the tires built in 1997 were
built at a United States manufacturer (they wouldn't tell me just who) and
that they had experienced quite a few separations on these tires. Their
tires are now manufactured in Mexico at Denman Tire Company (a historic
niche tire manufacturer) and these new tires are reputed to be a better
design (read that to mean different compounds next to the steel belt). My
advice would be to check the serial numbers of the tires that you are
getting and if they are old tires then I would not buy them. You can
determine the month and year built in the following manner: (continued on next page)
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