Crosley Wheels and Tires

Crosley has 12 inch wheels that are 4 inches wide with four lug bolts. If you search for wheels in this size, pretty much all you get are wheels for trailers. Same with the little tyres, they are trailer size. There are a few specialty wheels and tires for vintage little cars if you look hard and pay much more.
Tire manufactures used to have little 12 inch car tires for the Geo Metro and a couple of other small economy cars but those seem to be done for now.  It's probably fine to use trailer tires, since the performance of the Crosley is not that great and it does not weigh very much. The Crosley speed and weight is less than the load and speed rating of most trailer tires in 12 inches.

Ratings for new Supercargo

Lucky for me the wheels were is pretty good shape. Not enough rust to ruin the tire bead or cause a leak around the stems.  The rotten tires included two tubeless tires and two with the tubes. The wheels under the tubeless tires were in much better shape because they were dry inside. The tubed wheels had much more interior rust.

Removing the tires required cutting them off, because they were not very rubbery anymore. I cut around the sidewall on one side and then removed the doughnut and then the other half. On the two tubed wheels, I had to cut both sidewalls to get the old tires off.

12" Goodyear 4.80/4.00 vs Firestone 4.5 from 1950s

1950s Goodyear spare and new Supercargo not mounted

There were two manufacture of tires on the car; Firestone and Goodyear, and they were quite a bit different in size, even though were supposed to be the same size. The old Goodyear was the same size as the replacement trailer tires I ordered from Walmart. Supercargo tires also look a lot like the 4.80-12 inch Goodyear tires from the 1950's. The Firestone 4.5x12 tires were much larger, and the one on the front left had produced rubbing marks inside the wheel well. It was not a good choice for the front.

New tire bead gap

We ordered 5 new Supercargo tires from Walmart for pickup at the store. They came banded in a stack and were only 4 months old. They were pretty thin and hard to mount. Our solution was to stuff them with towels to make them wider for a while, several days, then mount them in the new wider state. Mounting was by hand with a screwdriver and some soapy water. Setting the bead was with an air chuck clamped on and then spraying some starter fluid in and lighting it up.

The inside and outside of the wheels are brushed, etched, primed and painted. I used metal threaded valve stems with some silicone sealer. No inner tubes are used. The tires are 750 lb load rated at 60 psi, so there is plenty of force on the tire bead. The size is 4.80-12 and tire is stamped rim size 3.75