What is it? CXXVII

[Bart Byers]

I don't understand why the gauge has nine divisions between each letter and the next.

[Leon]

I have never seen one myself, however as I previously mentioned, different manufacturers started at slightly different locations of the tire to determine the width measurement. Most tires back then had a rather inconsistent tread design that sometimes wrapped around to the sidewall vs. having a clear start and stop point for determining where the tread and sidewall ended. I would suspect that the graduations would help the reader take into consideration tread that appeared wider and or perhaps to help determine if the next up size could be used. Measurements may have been taken at multiple points on the tire.

[Leon]

Yeah it was a little dicey when filling the ten hundreds with split rims and waiting for the beads to pop. While our store was relative small and did

99% passenger tire business we did get the occasional split rim. We had no tire cage for airing up the tire so we laid the tire and wheel under a lift and powered the lift down on top of the wheel and tire when airing up.