Original wheels and tyres.

Funny, I logged in just now to send a message that an original set of tires is going to be up on Ebay !  The seller has original valve cover emblems up for sale, along with quite a few Memorabilia. Chatting with the wife, she mentioned that they sold the car 10 years ago, but still have the tires.....that he husband is still on the forum--so I figured by the title, you'd be him (!) but no, just wild coincidence. 

One of the memorabilia is an interview with Mort Sahl, who owned an early car (pre 8ma~750, I guess) and talked about the Cinturatos. My picture of the spare on 8ma1046 was a Cinturato CN72. One thing I'd never noticed before was the valve stem,  maybe someone knows for sure that it was or wasn't really original to the Goose but apparently the Bridgeport knurled knob and sheet metal cone were shipped on Miura http://www.miuraworkshop.com/tavtire.html . Ok, along with the lobo hanging on the wheel and now this, something new to find...!

The owners' manual (another Ebay piece) quotes Dunlop tires at 185/225 HR 15, on 7.0 and 7.5" wheels. Hopefully one of these 2 brands will be offered soon on Ebay, or I've really messed up the sell of 'for show only' tires...

Interesting in the Mort Sahl interview, he quotes 400 cars being made--this in a June 1969 publication, of course before all the cars had been made. Interesting that DeTomaso already seemed to be a plan on when to finish...Lee 

Wasn't there a rule that to be considered a "production car" and thusly eligible for some races that they must produce 400 cars...  The 401st added was the one-off Chevy engined goose built for Bill Mitchell.

I know the Miura was originally planned to only build 400, hence the name P400 (Produzione 400).  Granted they built much more once sales took off...

I was wrong once in the 70's, so I'm overdue for a potential error...   So who knows...

MH

Sure wish they would produce repro Pirelli Cinturato CN72s in the correct sizes for Mangustas…...

Btw, Denis corrected me (Mike, I'm usually wrong more than once every 40 years...I think I've made a life out of it, actually ) but apparently only early cars had 7.5" rears-- rears went to 8.0"--Lee

ps. ..and my guess is that that one time in the 70's you weren't wrong, just early...

Just to add. I have build sheets for 3 late cars . The details state Pirelli VR tyres

I would also like to add the following interview with Gandini (around 9:35) Gandini says he would use the wider tires if he redid the car today. That is my excuse to use more rubber on my car.

https://www.driveexperience.it...SL618-ZJiOp5mfpdiR_Y

How interesting, I've just always assumed that ratio tires and date codes always existed...but as I read, the CN72 was an 80% ratio (vs. everything else at 82% before)...so rears would be like a 245/70 (for sidewall height).  

..also, that date codes started around 1971. I tried looking at that picture of the spare on '1046 to see one before learning they didn't exist, at least on originals. I'm curious, do repro tires have date codes? 

What was the hot Dunlop tire in 1967? Lee

MH

As I undserstand it there were 401 cars built. The Bill Mitchell Mangusta / Corvette is car number 8MA670.  It was not built at the end of the run.  I have had that car since September of 1969.

I have heard that the last car built, the on that is #401 ( I do not know the actual number), was built for Gene Bordinat from parts after he became Design VP for Ford. I went to his funeral when he passed away and discussed the car with his widow.

Ford Design or Gene Bordinat did not understand the Giugiaro design and made alterations to the car that are completely out of character with the original design.

Forgotten is the fact that the Mangusta is built on a racing chassis and was intended to be a racecar for the street.  This is covered in the owners manual by de Tomaso himself.

60 series tires came out prior to 1969.  185 and 225 X 70 X 15 tires are shown on the original Giugiaro signed drawing of the production version of the Mangusta.

7 inch rims in the front and 8 inch rims in the rear.

My book,

BELLA MANGUSTA, The Italian Art and Design of the De Tomaso Mangusta

covers all of that.

DICK RUZZIN

402 cars.....some day this number should be accepted....and published....    One made for "King of Mexico" had an entire spare car worth of parts sent with it......requirement by Mexican gov't.   This "spare" car was also assembled from the parts and apparantly has a chassis number.....  Pic's and history were posted of these two cars in the last few years on this website.

The Bordinat car is chassis number 1196, way before the last.....it MAY have been one of the last cars assembled by the Germans...but not the last of the cars.....those were reserved for RH drive construction, 10-12 versions of such.

Dick,

How is it that your car wears clear front turn signal lens?   Was it a Euro car deflected to GM?  I thought that the amber lens AND the side markers were Fed mandated requirement for US sales....   What did I miss here?  Still a sharp looking ride!

...I met Dick at the 2016 Concorso Italiano and I think I asked him about his marker lights...and well, he liked the Euro clear better ! I didn't ask about the blackened trim, but didn't the first few cars have that way (esp, the one with solid rear bumper and Lancia teardrop side marker lights up front, on the 'brochure' we see?)

Btw, hard to believe the math, but a 225/80 would be a 180mm wall, so a 255/70 or 295/60...or 215/70, or 245/60 for the front. So unfamiliar seems an 80 series tire to me. I went lower ratio, but 70 series is probably the best fit for the car.  

(ps. would be nice if someone other than Vito could tell us from the records if 1302 was the last official car. The date on the bulkhead glass sticker for '1046 was September 1969...but seeing that 1008 had the same sticker and date, that was probably just the date the stickers were made. The distributor on '1074, was date coded December 1969...I'm curious how fast cars were really made at Ghia....). 

...Ok, another thing that will drive me crazy until I can find them....2 more pics of the valve stem and air cap, one from 8ma502 and the other on the spare of 8ma998. Next time I see a perfectly restored Miura on the street, please look the other way Lee

(fyi, link on these valve stem 'sleeves' on Ferrari...maybe time to learn how to spin a metal cone http://www.tomyang.net/cars/innertube.htm )

Hi

These aren't perfect, but i think it might be the closest we can get.

Front: 185R15 is the same diameter as a 205/70VR15. Pirelli make a 205/70WR15 Cinturato CN12 https://www.longstonetyres.co....-cinturato-cn12.html . I think that is pretty good.

The back is a little trickier. However Pirelli have also made some special tyres for the rear of the Muira SV. It is a 255/60WR15 Cinturato CN12.  https://www.longstonetyres.co....-cinturato-cn12.html Now my assumption is that this will be a bit smaller in diameter than the original 225R15 or 235R15, as in theory they should be 80% profile tyres. However there is tolerance within the measurements and there is a chance that these original rears were not actually a proper full 80 profile.

There are a few attractions to this set up:

they are W rated

they are Pirelli

From ythe side they look a bit like the CN72.

the 255/60VR15 CN12 is the talles widest road tyre i know of with a decent speed rating an without horrible white letters on the side.

What do you think.

If you look on  those web pages that have put links to you will see pictures of the tyres and if you scroll down you will find the dimesions of the tyres.

There is a picture of the CN72 on here https://www.longstonetyres.co..../cinturato-cn72.html

VERY IMPORTANT!   Keep in mind that overall diameter is very important.  The smaller the tire is the less clearance you have between the bottom of the bellhousing and the road!

You can, with adjustable coil over shocks raise the back of the car but that will give you a bigger gap between the tire and the wheel opening. Also, you will feel a difference in handling as raising the car in the rear changes the center of gravity.

This is not good.  The tires I have now,  235X60X15s in the  front and 275X60X15 rears all made by BF Goodrich. White letters in the back and painted black. The company is now owned by Michelin, now on my second set and they are better than the first. I am happy with them in almost every way.

THE ONLY PROBLEM.

Ride, the rear tires are rated to carry the weight of the entire car!  The tires are stiff for my light car and I would like tires that would give me a better ride.

I appreciate the work that you have done on this subject.

Go to VeloceToday.com, there I have written an article in two sections that compare my 50 year old Corvette powered Mangusta to my new C8 Corvette

DICK RUZZIN

I forgot to add that my original Semperit tires were 70 aspect ratio, I still have the original spare in the car.

DICK RUZZIN

at 689mm diameter, pretty big round tire...!  Lets see, how quickly can I get my present tires to wear out...

  Dick, cool article on the C8/your car. Striking always how small and low the Goose is compared to even other sports cars...

Edsel Ford lives not far from me and he got one of the first production GT 40s.

I was in the Mangusta and saw him driving. I will never forget the look on his face when I pulled along side and he had to look DOWN on me.

DICK RUZZIN

...you know, if that story involved a race for pink slips that you won because he didn't know you had a Chevy 327 instead of a Ford 302, it wouldn't be any better. That beats any car story I am ever going to have...! Lee

When all the high octane gas went away I had to lower the compression so had a 350 crank put in and a new high torque cam. I can drive at 1000RPM in fifth gear and floor it , accelerating smoothly.  A great motor..

DICK RUZZIN

Ok, found a repro of the pieces that were certainly junked when your tubes were pulled out...and you'll need a 5th for the spare...and unless you are back with tubes will have to trim down both the sleeve and also take a die to your valve stem to install them...and the knurl on the valve caps should be straight, not checkered...but at least, you know they are available See the Tom Yang article (earlier this thread).

https://kilimanjarodesigns.com...lve-stem-protectors/

(I think I'll still have a try myself chucking up and trying to spin the valve stem sleeve myself first, round blanks are available and I got a metal cone to acts as the form...and then drilling/tapping the common (aluminum) knurled adjustment nuts I have...Lee)

Notes on the many posts in this thread:

On bigger tires for the Mangusta, remember the bare chassis on display at Geneva '65 had 8" x 15" front wheels and 10 x 15" rears- no tires. There were 15" Goodyear Blue Streak racing tires back in the day that would fit them. Knowing DeTomaso never threw anything away when he could sell it to someone, that race chassis may have become a '65-'66 Mangusta.

10x 15" rear wheels also showed up on the restored version of the one-off Mangusta Spyder #8MA0912 back when Steve Nanny owned it. Also heard a rumor that a second Spyder was found in Portugal awhile back. No photos so dunno what wheels THAT one carried or what serial it has- if its even real.

I have a record of #8MA1302 as a right hand drive car somewhere in OZ, from a few years back but no owner listed. That should be car #402 as Steve said. A bunch of us got into the storage unit during the factory visit 1996, and there were at least 5 sets of front and rear Mangusta body-clips stacked on top of each other. Certainly wouldn't be impossible to fabricate a 'few' continuation cars from left-overs.

...there was this car--and I assume at one time, it was a genuine car (since it had the 'factory' skid plate. At least, the skid plate survived (!)). Provamo shows a second spider (with 8ma512 so unique, with the very early lancia side marker lights and a kind of channel at the belt line)...

Lee,

Quite the job of trimming off the "Goose" from the bones.......!   Would liked to have seen more pic's of the "leftovers"!

Steve

Steve, on the Blue Goose, I remember your maybe-factory spare tire had a sidewall marked 'Blem'. Talk about the factory saving a buck....

@mangusta posted:

Lee,

Quite the job of trimming off the "Goose" from the bones.......!   Would liked to have seen more pic's of the "leftovers"!

Steve

Steve, the surprise is--there is a whole car for that chassis, 8ma968...probably a "ran when parked, wanted to restore it and then had a kid" stories...But honestly,  a car that probably should come back to life some day... See as 8ma968 and also "unknown 1541" on Provamo--Lee

I think the tire subject is another typical De Tomaso rabbit hole.  To add to it:

I have a brownline print, that came from Ford Design, that came from GHIA.

It is 1/10 scale. It is the four views of the Mangusta PRODUCTION car. Not the show car and it was signed by Giugiaro. Dated August 10, 1964.  The show car was shown with the chassis later in October at the Turin show. The production car, like mine, has very large wheel tubs for, wide race tires?

The side view drawing shows the tire size on the tires. 225X15X70 on the rear and 185X70X15 on the front. Tire information and ground height is some of the essential information required to start the drawing.

I sent two copies of the drawing to Giugiaro, one for him and one for his signature to be returned to me.  They didn't read that part of my message

So I never got the return copy.

When I saw his son Fabrizzio the following January at the NAIAS he said that his dad framed it and put it on his office wall.

I would like to put better tires on my car but the 275X15X60 rears and the 235X60X15 fronts look very good on the car, fill the wheelwells in the rear and give me good road clearance. They are very good tires.

As I said I wish they rode better but that is the problem of the Michigan roads not the tires.

Regarding the speed rating, I am done driving the car over 140.  

1959, while in college I put a small block in my MGTD and after getting it running my dad worried about the tires. He sent me to a tire store  and I had them put 670X15X70 Something on the car, same size as the current Corvette. I went right out and drove it about 140.

The bill, for 4 tires installed and balanced was something like $16.50.

He got a discount.  Scary.

Dick Ruzzin

Dick, sounds like you owe your dad $16.50...he probably kept you alive (!)  When did you get the drawing? And esp, why did Ghia give a copy to Ford? Amazing that you ended up later with the car... Lee

I already had the Mangusta for several years. A good friend who was a designer at Ford called me one Saturday morning and said that another Ford designer had retired and was moving to Florida. He was having a garage sale and he was sure that I would like to have it. I said absolutely and he bought it for me.

It is a brownline copy of a mechanical drawing on a little sheet, 1/10th scale  with a GHIA title block in the lower right corner. The date and Giugiaro's signature are there. It is the drawing of the production version of the car. I think that the interior was done at that time. Tom Jaarda told me that Giorgetto did both the exterior and interior. The Chief Designer at Bertone worked with him at GHIA and told me that hed did the car at home on his kitchen table.

I can only speculate that when de Tomaso approached Ford for engines it led to the idea that Ford Design would redo the car. That would have been a dumb idea but it was clear when they modified the Mangusta for Gene Bordinate that they did not understand the design.

Who knows, but the drawng was there.  It's interesting for me to evaluate the drawing as I can see the changes that were made from the original design and there are many. The production version I am quite sure is narrower. With de Tomaso fitting the racing chassis under it resulting in foundational changes. The sheer walls had to be set up along side the engine first. The original design was probably set up aroind a Chevrolet engine as Giugiaro would have had that information from his previous work on the Bizzarrini sedan.

Some changes were made also I am sure as he saw the first car being built or the first time. Of note is that the drawing shows the front leading edge of the hood to have a rising crown, this was changed to a straight horizontal line which makes the front look quite aggressive, You can see the change was late as the leading edge of the hood is simply bent down, a brilliant solution to the problem.

The upper corners of the grill opening are shown as rounded so that it looked like a previous small two passenger open car. Pompero is the only name that I can recall. Giugiaro evolved his designs, car to car. It was the only way that he could do so many so quickly, rarely stepping away and doing something completely different. The Strada is one.

You can see the Mangusta design and form language lineage starting way back, actually in the first Alfa Romeo coupe that was done at Bertone when he started there. It was very basic as he created an accent in the center of a section rather than at the end, No other designer did that. Continuing on in the FIAT 850, the iso Grifo, etc.  And there is no doubt that the Miura was a Giugiaro design to start with. His signature form language and many details clearly show that.  The rear drive FIAT Kangaroo, done two years earlier, was also a race car for the street, like the Mangusta.  

I cover all of this in my book and much more, including my copies of the side and plan view of the Mangusta.I di all four views but did not use two of them. I re-did them as design sketches so that I would not have to wait eternally for permission to use the drawing.

DICK RUZZIN

We've recently purchased these Pirelli tyres for our restoration. They look great, nice and period and a welcome change from the Michelin XWX. once they're on the car I'll get some pictures up.

Pleaselet us know how they ride.

Dick Ruzzin

What sizes are they and overall diameter of both.  This would be very helpful to all.

@dickruzzin posted:

What sizes are they and overall diameter of both.  This would be very helpful to all.

205/70/15 front, 255/60/15 rear.

I do not know the diameter of the 255s but I think you will be a little shy on diameter which will lower the back of the car, and your bell housing. I think my 265 X 60 series tires are a hair smaller than the originals.

If  you do not need to have a Euro tire on your car......and to go thru all the gyrations of trying to find a (I'm not sure what?) set of tires......

You can go old school BFGoodrich or similar....  Fronts 215-60/15 and Rear 275-60/15 and be done with all of this chatter...... rated for at least 100mph....and good longevity out of them providing you do not dork up your front wheel alignment by changing shock settings (or just about anything else...like installing alloy heads & intake on your engine....losing 50lbs due to Covid!)  after you have the alignment shop work done!!!

These tires fill out the wheel wells perfectly......

Cheers!
Steve

Steve,

I tried 225s on the front and did not like the road feel  at all.

Your car looks like it is sitting low, what is your bell-housing clearance?

I would guess 3 1/2 inches.

Dick,

The 215's rub the inner trunk panel on full lock LH turn I believe....could be one car to another variances....  and I figured 225's would be more problems..... No need for them.

Since I was missing about 3/8" of the bottom of my bellhousing I had a tad more clearance than normal!!!!  But 3-1/2 is pretty close...I thought I had under car pic's somewhere....couldn't locate them.....

The beach pic was taken in 2012, after my engine swap/ZF/frame rebuild plus associated bits and pieces....front shocks in there somewhere also.  I believe that I went in for one more front suspension change, which involved raising the front end just a tad from what is seen in the pic's, and because of alignment issues associated (unbeknownst to me!!!) with the prior changes we needed a new set of shoes up front once again!!!

It's almost like if you take on a large passenger you're threatening your expensive alignment $$$s!  Tire$!!!    As Johnny Woods pointed out, the front end on these cars is pretty darned dynamic..... all you can hope for is "getting it close" and stocking up on front rubbers if you do a LOT of driving....which we did.  Then DON'T TOUCH IT!          On the other hand, the rear tires wore extremely light over the same time frame..... of course bad ball joints up front didn't do the car any good either.....

Was nice driving, comfortable car!!!!

Steve

STEVE,

The original front tire section is very round, remember those 80 series tires? Originally 70s on the Mangusta, very round.. Also tire sections changed away from fuel economy toward handling, more rubber on the road. So they went from round to more square. Later they kept the wide section but were able to help the fuel economy with tread design and compound adjustments.

Every modern section tire will rub the wheel house inner at the back, doesn't matter the size.

Dick Ruzzin

Just an update on these tyres - look, and feel great. only issue we had was the fronts caught the front lower valance, and needed the wishbones spacing as far back as possible, and a touch of caster needed by adjusting the frontmost upper wishbone joint.

This has been a wonderful subject, probably the most important one. Had my suspension aligned by a great guy on a modern machine about five years ago. It tracks and brakes straight and true still.  Wonderful.

My Goodyears are about five years old so I am ready for new tires and love what I see here on the Pirellis. Looked at the site and they recommend a 255 rear which sounds good for me. When I get my car back from the National Corvette Museum in December I will start looking at it seriously.

Does anyone know the Pirelli load rating and how they ride? That is the big problem with the BF G's for me.

Thanks everyone for a great discussion so far.

DICK RUZZIN

Hi Dick, assuming the Pirelli's are CN12's,  the load rating for front is 90 (= 600kgs / 1323 lbs) and rears are 102 (850 kg / 1874 lbs). W speed rating = 168mph.
I'm using 275/55 Avons CRZZ's on rear which fill out the arch nicely, they have slightly high load rating (104) but also slightly lower speed rating (V = 149 mph). Good grip, pretty soft tyre.

Cheers

Larry Tucker