Hot Rods Pros and Cons of reverse rims?

Pros a nd Cons of reverse rims?

 

Look cool, may cause body interference, need to re align a front end with IFS, more stress on wheel bearings.

 

Planning on reversing your own, or buying new? Very few (if any) actually make a true reversed rim anymore, they just change rim width and backspacing to give a 'reversed' look.

 

A friend had these made somewhere. They wouldn’t work on the front of his 62 Impala, so they are going on my roadster pickup. I love the look !!!

 

I made some back in the 60's, knocked out the rivets turned the center around and welded back together.

 

They were not friendly to front outer wheel bearing’s especially Chevrolet’s ball style.

 

Many are cheaply made.
Many, many moons ago, my Dad bought a set of reversed, chrome "wheels" for my Mom's 62 Impala.

Never gave it much thought one way or the other, until I was walking up the driveway and noticed, the rear wheels had a negative camber ! I looked at the front...again, a negative camber !
I mentioned it to my Dad. We looked at the wheels, off the car, nothing out of the ordinary seemed wrong.
I guess it bugged my Dad enough,,,he bought a set of ET, aluminum wheels for the car ! I don't recall what he did with the steel wheels, but know, they were...gone.

Never ran or owned a set since.

Mike

 

I've run chrome reversed rims for about 50 years. I never had any problems. I like the look of them.

 

My standard reply :

"Look at my car; it really peels; lookin' real tough with chrome reverse wheels."

Jan and Dean -1962

I've never had a problem. Posts like #7 make me think something else was wrong.

 

Stupid me never understood what reversed wheels really meant until I saw this post. I’ve probably seen them many dozens of times but never realized it meant the centers were flipped in the rim itself. I stupidly thought it was the way damn wheels were mounted on the car. No one ever explained it to me. A 50+ year mystery has finally been revealed.

 

Sounds like you and I had the same person teach us how to change a tire. It wasn't a red-haired woman named Lois, by chance? She had me jack the car up, take the tire off, put the tire back on and, SLAP, I got hit in the back of the head by Lois who happened to be one of my Mom's friends. She made me take the tire I had just put on backwards back off and turn it around. I was really proud of myself until, SLAP, I got told to take it back off and turn the lug nuts around. That little red-haired woman had a slapping hand on her like the wrath of Jesus. I think she was more pissed off at my father because he wouldn't teach me. In his opinion, I was a guy and guys are supposed to automatically know things like that.

 

That’s funny right there! Reminds me of my first trip into California in a truck. Got pulled in at the world famous Bannon scale house. They did an inspection of the truck and trailer, found 5 lug nuts on the trailer were on backward! Wasn’t my fault, I didn’t put them on like that, some dummy at a shop did, but I got written up for it. DOT officer didn’t see it that way, he said I was driving so I was supposed to check stuff like that myself. I was young and green, and didn’t know any better. I did know they were backwards when he showed them to me. I learned to watch stuff like that, and the company paid the ticket, so it was a win after all.

 

Mine look just like Marks but the stem is on the outside close to the center. Mine clear fine on my 62 impala they are 14x6. Lippy

 

That makes no sense to me. Lippy

 

my black corvair has two of them, their offset looks really wide, so the plan is to run them in the back and try to source some 1960s spinners, then run some mini moons in the front. might look good?
they arent really... chrome, anymore. if i put them on a balancer or maybe the rear wheels while its running and polish them they might shine up.

 

Back in the late 50’s and early 60’s we didn’t have wide wheels. 7 or 8” were made by cutting 2 wheels and welding them together. Real wide ones had a 1-2-3” strap welded in.
You could always tell the reversed 15” by the 45* side being infront. The riveted were definitely the easiest to do.

 

Sorry..!
Read that..."reversed"... !
Go back to your 8th grade science cl***, "levers". And they weren't even that deeply reversed. Just cheap I guess.

Mike

 

Back in the late fifties and early sixties, had a side business of making reversed wheels. (I was the only guy in town with a welder.) My main distributor was "Carmichael's Auto Parts" (the local junkyard). They gave me the wheels and I took them apart, reversed then and welded them back together. He sold them for $10 each and we split the proceeds. (We even put some Buick rims on Ford centers; they commanded the princely sum of $20 each.)

How things have changed.

 

I did a thread a couple years ago showing the process:

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/reversed-a-couple-wheels-yesterday.1157096/

 

Slightly off topic, where did you get your triple line whitewall tires? Love those!

 

Come on, that was the first item, two at a time, you got for your new used car, chrome reversed wheels. Next step was to paint the brake drum and center section red or orange.

 

Pro:
They're cool as hell!
Cons:
It's hard to find wheels with the tapered back side now days
In some cases finding centers with the right OD centers to match the hoop ID can be an issue when changing bolt patterns

Safety beads on wheels screwed everything up! Damned Ralph Nader (just kidding, I doubt he knows what a safety bead is!).

 

I had to reverse the vintage Rader 6x15 wheels I used in my Mysterion clone. In my research I found out Richard Rader started the company as Wheel Corporation of America in 1961 based on these early 'mags'. The original Mickey Thompson Rader wheels were plentiful in the day and were used on several custom cars, most famously on the TV Batman Batmobile built by George Barris for the television show. In fact Richard said in a recent interview that he gave Barris free wheels for every project for advertising purposes. Unfortunately they had a business falling-out and Barris removed the Rader wheels from all the customs and replace them with other wheels. Richard said that he supplied Barris with reversed, deep wheels for the Batmobile, just like the ones on the Mysterion. He said he got the wheels from the factory in unreversed condition like everyone else and had to remove the aluminum center, turn the outer diameter down on a metal lathe and reinstall it backward to get that deep effect. They may have been made with wider rims on special order but I have never seen a set made before 1963 with a rim wider than 6” and studying the original car I am positive Ed used the standard 6” wide version. Second the wheels never came ‘reversed’ from the factory as Rader described above. Every set I have ever seen has the deep offset side of the wheel on the inside and the shallow part of the rim on the outside.

I drilled the rivets (they are HARD!!!!!) and broke I don't know how many carbide drill bits. Once out I pressed them back into the reversed rim, then drilled and tapped the rim/spokes for grade-8 bolts. Being a show car I am not worried about the bolts coming out from the 10 or so revolutions the wheels will make in their lifetimes. Anyway, the Lok-***ed in bolts should be as good as rivets.

They all came from the factory with shallow offset in front. Also came in none, one, and 3 rib, like this one designs. I needed one's. Seems most were 14", pretty hard to find 15" ones.




I had to press the centers out. They are tight.


they used a very good grade of aluminum in the web. This is the vintage part after nothing but a minute or two on my polishing wheel.


I made a wood box the proper height to support the web in the rim while drilling the bolt holes on my steel-topped bench. Don't you love shade tree engineering?!!


Installing the bolts. These grade 5's were replaced with 8's on final ***embly.

I had the parts chrome plated separately before ***embly. I asked they polish the deep side of the rims ***uming the shallow would be hidden behind the brake drums. When I picked them up they had polished the shallow side with the filler hole so I made them go back and polish the deep side. Got the whole wheel polished for bargain price!

 

We called them station wagon wheels. On The GM cars, most I saw were a tad wider than regular wheels. I have the OG set for my Ford, narrow at 4.5" and they are reversed. We made our own for the stock cars, really not that hard to do.

 

Diamondback tires will make almost whatever sidewall design you want... The catch is it's in a radial. I bought a set of triple-lines for my '60 Sunliner 'vert.

 

A friend of mine reversed these in the early 60’s.

 

I can't fathom how much reverse you would need on a modern bearing to cause an issue. I have 15x10 with 3-3/4" backspace (technically a reverse wheel), with over 36,000 km's and the wheel bearings were used but in good shape with over 250,000 km when I put the wheels on and I've had zero issues.

I think the claim of stress on wheel bearings must be based on old technology bearings.