www.madmaxmovies.com

From the thread “BoB 83/84” (pictured 7) has the black interceptor pictured at the scrap yard.
Notice the BF Goodrich T/A white written tyres exposed on the car again like in Mad Max 1! That was before the rebuild and promotional road tour and after the filming of Mad Max 2! Notice the front tyre tread (pictured 3 already posted) verses (pictured 7 above). Have they simply reversed the Mad Max2 tyres on their rims exposing the white writing perhaps? There’s a newer generation tyre on the rear, looking at the tread and no number after the T/A when compared to MM1.

It’s all out the window with the tyres on this car as it sits today as (pictured 2 already posted) as many know…..

Getting the hang of this, some of those pictures were a little BIG.....

I want to see proof of the Mad Max 1 car tyre sizes...

So, I started measuring the TV, we have big screen TV’s and DVD’s nowadays, but what does it say after the T/A on the interceptor in MM1? Is it a number 50 or 60 perhaps?

I found the likes of :
(Pictured E,F or G)?

Need more photos…

Anyone getting a laugh from this? Been there done that? …….

Without this website I wouldn’t have found this magic picture (Pictured J) This picture has to be BIG
The vertical height of a life size “front” and the “rear” XB Coupe door is 650mm and therefore I got around a 655mm Diameter front wheel and around a 675mm Rear.

Rear tyre width!

MM1 the Interceptor turns right out of the side road after the fuel tanker.

The Tail light assembly is 350mm in width.
Tail light on the screen measures 70mm (Pictured K)
Move the car back ½ a tyre revolution which is equal to the horizontal distance between the tail light and the bottom of the rear tyre (to get the same depth perception for the measurement) the tyre (pictured L) measures 52mm
Therefore … (350 Tail Light divided by the 70 Tail light) x 52 tyre = 260mm wide rear tread.

Front tyre width:

The Interceptor heads out from the Hall of Justice MM1.

To get the correct depth for the measurement, notice the nosecone shadow just over the ridge. (Pictured M)
A HJ Indicator lens is 195mm in width.
Lens on the screen measures 18mm.

Move the car forward until the tyre is at the same position as the shadow, just over the ridge. (Pictured N)
The tyre tread measures say 19mm?

There is a better shot of the front from the movie after the Interceptor does a U-turn and before running the bikes off the bridge. However those slightly narrower tyres didn’t have white writing on them and would have been put on the car just for the hand brake U-turn stunt.

Therefore … (195 lens divided by the 18 lens) x 19 tyre = 205mm wide front tread.

Conclusion : Front 205mm wide tread, 655 Diameter …and… Rear 260mm wide tread, 675 Diameter.

I couldn’t find any pictures of 60 or 70 series Radial T/A tyres with the numbers in white writing on the side walls anywhere. I could only find pictures of 60 and 70’s in Delter tyres. (Pictured F and G already posted)

This tyre (Pictured O) looks like the tread of (Pictured D already posted)?
What’s the metric conversion of say 10 inches in (Pictured O) … 254mm! .... I did get about 260mm earlier!

The tyre (Pictured O) above is the larger of the tyres in this ebay advert’ I found … (Pictured P) and (Pictured Q)

This tyre (Pictured R) looks like (Pictured 5, already posted) and (Pictured L, already posted) too?

The front and rears had matching treads in the MM1 film.

Nothing to do with MM1 but (Pictured 3, already posted) from MM2 also has this tread above.

(Pictured S) from a 1970’s advertisement for BF Goodrich Radial T/A tyres I found.
From the picture I noticed:

- The 70 series tyres has a completely different tread in the advertisement and no number 70 after the T/A.
- The 60 series tyres have no 60 after the T/A either….

It’s all visible…. The black interceptor can only have said “50” even though I found no interceptor pictured where I could actually read what is written after the T/A.


None of the importers seemed to have a chart of these old tyres.
But I eventually found the following and chose the appropriate tyres :
(Pictured T1 and T2)
http://stro.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/obsoletes.pdf
pages 14 and 15.

Notice the LR50-15 is the same as more common L50-15! (Pictured T1 above)…. I bet the missing R just stood for Radial on this more common old tyre chart.

To recap from my measurements :

............Rear 260mm wide tread, 675 Diameter .......................................and Front 205mm wide tread, 655 Diameter.

LR50-15 = (295mm wide, 679 Diameter also (Pictured O already posted)) and FR60-15 = (233mm wide, 658 Diameter ) The diameter's are the tell tail here!

- The next size down from FR60-15 fronts are ER60-15, being (220mm 648 Diameter) just a 10mm inaccurate measurement scaled up from (Pictured J).
- The next size up from FR60-15 is a HR60-15 being (255mm 687 Diameter) 31mm Larger in diameter, there is no way it’s that….

Today’s availiable Equivalents :

LR50-15 = (295mm 679 Diameter) and FR60-15 = (233mm 658 Diameter )
295/50/15 (310mm 678 Diameter) and 225/60/15 (228mm 650 Diameter) smaller
……………………………………………………….…..235/60/15 (241mm 663 Diameter) larger
……………………………………………………………215/65/15 (221mm 660 Diameter)

I have since read .MAD MAX. mentioning L50-15 and F60-15 on the “Original Interceptor in Miami thread” after being reassured by Murray Smith the actual Mad Max1 Mechanic…. (If it's possible to remember.)

My workings came to LR50-15 / L50-15 and FR60-15 / F60-15 as per my calculations which can be traced and checked.

Nuts.........

some nutbar in Canada did this same research 16 years ago

.MAD MAX. wrote:some nutbar in Canada did this same research 16 years ago

Yes, those were the days when coupes were $1100-, suppliers were actually listed in the parts section on this website and L60-15 rear tyres actually had 7 lines of tread when maybe 8 were needed....

That nutbar in Canada ended up building an excellent car none the less!... I have 7's for the front ordered because it's the only way without a real positive offset (more backspace) to get to the original film car rim look....

Thanks for the reassurance by mentioning your L50-15's and F60-15's and 7's....