[dgs]

I appreciate your comments, but I am confident that there may have been several differences on the cars that were factory equiped with radials. I read a very comprehensive article in the Spring 2001 issue of Invention and Technology magazine on the intruduction of radials in the US. They mentioned several problems that cars made for bias tires exhibited when using radials. My '60 shows them all, to some extent. Wandering on the highway (needs about 15 degrees of steering to keep it in the lane), harsh over expansion joints and excessive road noise from the tires. The article mentioned new alignment settings, revised suspention bushing geometry and new 'isolators' in the driveshaft. However, I haven't found anyone to verify any of those things except the alignment settings (0 - 1/16" toe in instead of 1/16" - 1/8" toe in). I know that the thunderbird in either '67 or '68 was the first American vehicle (along with the Lincolns of the same year) to offer radials. I'm hoping some Glamour Bird enthusiast out there will be able to check their shop manual or parts book to find out if there were actually diffent parts in the standard suspension vs. the 'Radil Tuned' suspension.

Why do I care, as an owner of an older 'bird? Well, my car needs tires and my gut says go with radials, they're better. Well, now I think maybe for my older 'bird, maybe I should go with bias instead. I'm not sure my car can be properly set up to run it's best with radials.

Oh, and it has kinda become an obsession to find out the lost information about what is different between the two tire types.

Thanks for humoring me. :D