in my opinion, one of the most dramatic and noticeable changes you can make to your car is adding a set of wide whitewall tires. however, these wide whites can get very expensive. there is an inexpensive alternative though.
this may sound strange to you, but, you can paint your sidewalls white. yes, you heard me right, paint.
i stopped by walmart one day on my way home from work and bought 3 cans of 96 cent spray paint. one can of gloss black, two cans of flat white.
the first step is to clean both the tires and wheels really well. i stopped at the car wash and hosed them off real good. once i was home i removed one wheel/tire at a time, layed it down flat and used a household cleaner like windex on the wheel and on the sidewall.
the wheel had some rusty spots on it. i used 220 grit sandpaper to knock down the rust so that it wasn't so rough and bumpy. then cleaned the sanding dust off. then i used a piece of sheet metal, approximately 6"x 14" and bent it to fit the curve of the wheel, to use to keep excess black paint off of the sidewalls.
on most tires there is a seam at the top of the sidewall where the tread pattern begins, i used a flexible masking tape to tape off the the sidewall at the seam. i measured the diameter of the wheel and cut a cardboard circle to use to keep the white paint off the freshly painted wheels.
and there you have it, 5 inch wide white walls for the cost of 2 cans of spray paint. not bad, huh? i can't tell you how many comments and thumbs up i've gotten since doing this. everywhere i go someone comments on my wide whites.
well, as you can see, my 15 year old radials look like a million bucks with the new white walls painted on them. unfortunately, they did not perform like a million bucks. in an effort to get the best gas mileage with this huge machine, i inflated the tires to the maximum psi that was printed on the sidewall of the tire. this pressure proved to be a bit much for the old tires. one morning on my way to work(at approx. 70 mph) i heard and felt this whump. i immediately felt really bad vibration and looked in my rearview mirror and saw a hunk of tread go flying. i pulled to the shoulder to check things out. my right rear tire was still holding air,but, was missing 90% of the tread. kind of a scary way to wake up in the morning. it could have been a lot worse. anyway, i limped the rest of the way in, 2 or 3 miles, at 40 mph. after work i went to change my tire and pulled out the spare and surprise! the tread had blown on the spare while it was sitting in the trunk.