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On 29 Aug 2003 at 23:25, joshua brooks wrote: > Coincidentally this is why tires are black. If you look at tires on very > early cars they were white. As you can imagine white tires would get grungy > looking very quickly so they color them black. Modern tires are still made > of vulcanized latex rubber wich is white. Modern tires are black because of the addition of carbon black to the rubber compound. This is mainly to improve the wear properties of the rubber. I hadn't thought of the appearance factor, but I agree that natural rubber tires would very quickly become ugly. BTW, natural latex is that kind of light yellow color, like traditional surgical gloves and latex tubing. I don't know what they added to early tires to make them white. Red tires used to exist, especially for racing bicycles, and the additive for that was iron oxide. In modern times we now see various colors in bicycle tires, but I have no idea what they add to the rubber to turn it blue or green. I believe that carbon black continues to be the best choice for wear, but sometimes esthetic concerns win out. Around 1970, Mezler made a snow tire called the Mezler Blue Blizzard that had black sidewalls and a blue tread area. They were stunningly beautiful and I always wanted a set for my VW Blue 68. That would have been awsume, but I was too poor at the time to be able to afford anything that nice. I've only ever seen one set of these, and that was about 15 years ago on a TR-? parked near my house. -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org