Looking for tires for my '67 Monaco

I spent some time this week on the phone with 1010 tires (on-line outfit operating in Canada, they have 2 retail locations - in BC and near Toronto) and called Queensway tire in Simcoe. They rep for Coker and they sort-of specialize in tires for older cars. I've called a lot of other local and not so local tire retailers in SW Ontario, asking about 215/75-14. Unless I'm looking for a trailer tire (which will be 6 or 8 ply and ride very hard) I'm not going to find that size, with the possible exception of the Hankook Kinergy ST which I can get apparently the last set around here for $580 (tires only, all taxes in). Which I've been assured are not the trailer tire version, but are black-wall (not the white wall version).

I've been told the tire situation in Canada changed a lot in the past 5, 4 years, they "don't bring in" a lot of the tires from the US like they might have in the past. A lot of smaller retail garages and tire shops seem to all source their tires from some magic warehouse. Costco and CanadaTire probably have their own setup when it comes to "bringing them in". 1010 tires is an exception, they do bring them in, I'll have to explore more of what they can get, and how much.

I'm perfectly happy to get 215/75-14, it will be a good match for G78-14, and will fit the 5.5" wide rims. I've called junk yards around here, wondering if they have any old steel wheels, the answer is a resounding no. I made it side-project to look for 6" wide (or 6.5" wide if they exist?) 14" wheels, I don't see much on ebay (anything I do see are in the US). I did see a lot of those rally wheels, I think some are 14" ? But they're all 5.5" wide I think. I did see some 6" wide, probably would have cost me $100 total (CAD) to "bring in". I've got maybe 4 extra 14" x 5.5 rims, and some 15" rims (that are 6.75 wide?) that I was planning to use on my '73 Satellite a loooong time ago.

BUT, but...

I have another option, which is to order tires on-line and have them delivered to a friend's house in Oxford Michigan, and pick them up from there during a 2-day stay and bring them back duty free. So I'm all ears if anyone has any recommendations for an on-line source. 215/75-14, whitewall. The off-brand Venezia 787 looks nice.

BTW, regarding the "Commander" tires I posted photos of at the top of this thread -

I called Coker and asked when they made them. The guy I got didn't seem to think they were their tires. I pushed, he went to talk to some people, turns out yes, they are Coker's, something they haven't made since before 2000. So those are 20, 25 year old NOS tires being sold on kijiji about 100 miles from me. I talked to the guy, he was going to be travelling near me right about now, he had the price dropped from $650 to $400. I told him they were 25 year old tires, could he do better on the price? He said he had someone else looking at them, and then a few days later he says they were sold. That was about a 10 or so days ago, before I realized how hard it was going to be to get 14" tires around here. If I had known, I would have been more agressive to get them. Apparently someone else already knew.
 
Back
Top