I want some wider wheels for my 56 Ford. I've been researching this for awhile and read many posts about widening and rehooping here on the HAMB as well as the www. I measured my wheel centers and they are 12 5/8" so I ordered one wheel hoop from Speedway to check out the possibility of making this all happen. One of my rims was so rusty inside I could barely make out the top of the rivets which gave me some scary thoughts. Anyways, following the other threads I read I heated the hoop up and after a couple wacks of the hammer the center popped right out. The ID of the original rim and the Speedway rim are both 12 5/8". The original center is 1/16" bigger (12 11/16"). Here is my question, if I heat the rim up around the middle is it possible for it to expand enough to put the center in or will I be looking at pressing it in regardless? The one Mustang article I read made it seem like it just "drops" in there which is obviously not going to be the case. I don't have any spare wheels so I thought I would ask instead of rushing in and getting myself in a pickle. If I was have to press it I was thinking of getting an old axle and chop it off to 12" or something. Then just bolt it to the center and press it in from the back. Thank you in advance. Old and new side by side. Original center. Old rim.
I've gotten them in by just squaring everything up and setting the center in the rim. Get an appropriate sized chunk of 4x6 to set on it and blow it in with a big, real big, hammer. You gotta hit it square. Drive it in from the back side.
I would clean up the center a bit with a grinder before I slide it in the new hoop. If you run the grinder over the outside edges it will take a bit off. You want it clean first, I think you will only want to do it one time. A tight fit is good.
I was going to wire wheel most of it and blast the hard to get areas first. The Speedway wheel is kind of low quality IMO. The dies they use are not very smooth so I need to give it a good sanding first as well. It will be a lot easier than trying to sand around the center after.
Make sure before you weld/ tack that you bolt it to a hub you can spin and use a dial indicator to get it as close as you can. Max. runout .010
If the original wheel hoop is, in fact, 12 5/8"...and the new hoop is 12 5/8"...then you have either mis-measured the wheel center...or...quite possibly there is enough 'spring' in the wheel center flange to account for the difference. The method described above by choffman41 is what I would also recommend. That is how I have done mine. One question....are you planning on "tubbing" your Ford wheel houses? Ray
Ray the ID of the two wheel hoops are were about 1/32" difference measuring the ID with a 1/16" tape measure. I don't have an ID caliper that large but I measured both hoops the same way so if there is a small amount of error in my methods it is the same for both wheels. It is the center that is slightly larger which I figure is by design to have an interference fit. The frame rails are quite wide on these cars so yes I planned on moving it over about the width of the frame rail itself. I'm not looking to pro street it or anything I just want to run a wider tire with the stock wheel look. I've considered just moving the frame rails over and using leaf springs or maybe a truck arm suspension. I don't want to loose my back seat under no conditions. Just make a nice looking street cruiser (IMO).
One of the articles I read used what looked like a spindle off of a straight axle. I have a fox body spindle, I was just going to make a mount that bolts to the strut mount, clamp it in my vice and use that to check for run out.
Something I have done is to use a drill press. Place the rim on the table, then place the dial indicator mount in the chuck. Only turn by hand. First check the Barrel to make sure your drill press table is level. Once it is check the center to make sure it is as perfect as you can get.
throw the hub center in the freezer over night and see if it shrinks up enough to make it drop fit in , the rim shop by me heats the hoops in a special fire ring that heats it evenly and drop the centers in place then align and weld them .
I've done a few sets of wheels for my stock cars back in the day with different offsets. I always made sure that the centers were a easy slip fit into the hoop. They were small enough to swing on a big lathe on an expandable collet. Once I had them the desirable fit, I would make a series of punch marks on the part of the center that contacts the hoop so they'd stay in place while I squared them up for tack welding. My jig was the front rotor of the car and a dial indicator on a magnetic base.
I had a friend make wheels wider by cutting them at the center on a brake lathe, add a sheet metal band, as wide as you want the wheel, then weld in the band and check for leaks. He widened wheels for race cars and street cars. He has since p***ed on or I could ask him more about it.
That would be an option if the size I wanted wasn't already available. You would have to widen the hoop then move the center to the proper new location. I read a bunch of threads like this as well. Especially when it came to people making larger ID wheels like 18" where the selection of hoops is much smaller.
Make sure that you clean the hell out of the ford center, it is a riveted center so there may be close to 1/16 scale on it. It is liable to still be a tight fit. If you have a good freezer, toss the center in the freezer over night. If your woman is easy to get along with you can also stick the hoop in a 400 degree oven for a little bit then see if you can slide them together.
The center is supposed to be a press fit. Drive it in with a hammer, mount the wheel on a front hub, give it a spin and check that it runs true. Wheels are considered true if they are within 1/8", you can get them closer than that. Tap with a hammer, try again, until they are straight.Make up a pointer out of a block of wood and a piece of coat hanger wire. Check that the offset is where you want it. Tack weld in 3 or 4 spots then weld it solid. Do your welding on the inside. Clean up the center before you put the wheel together. Sandblast or grind and wire brush clean. Paint the wheels after you get done welding. That is how we used to do them, using salvaged Buick rims or whatever wide ones we could find in the junk yard.
When I did the fronts for my HA/GR, I took the centres and hoops to the local wheel repairer to get his advice, as in, heat hoops or freeze centres. He looked at them and told me to knock the centres in with a block of wood and a big hammer. From memory the difference was about 2 millimetres (5/64). That's what I did, and then mounted an old hub and stub axle in the vise and trued it up with pointer made out of a sharpened hacksaw blade clamped to the vise. Welded the centres in , got the tyres mounted and balanced. They required only a small amount of weights to balance.
Back in the 80's,I took vw bug outers(skinny) and mated them to Plymouth "cop" car centers.The centers had to be driven in with a 16 lb sledge hammer and a 4 x 4 block of wood.Mounted to a fixture,I tapped and moved the two pieces back and forth until I got "runout" to .030/.040,then welded on backside.Turnd out great,but spent all day m***aging these two wheels For my early Anglia.
I did this with the rear wheels of my plymouth. I cut out the centers by grinding off the rivents and then cutting the hoops with a cut off wheel. I cleaned up the outer edges of the centers before pressing them into the hoops I got from Speedway. I then mounted it on the car and attached a dial gauge to the housing and found that I had very little runout ( in both directions lateral and vertical). Then I ran a few weld beads and had the tires mounted. It took time but it was worth it.
In the past I have used temp spare rims and GM Rally centers . Just hammered them in and used the front hub of the car with an indicator made from a coat hanger . I removed and rotated the hub to change stud holes to check trueness at 3 different places . It took a small amount of time . Made several sets this way no issues . Tacked in 3 different places and finished welding . I did not weld the hub solid , about 3 inch long welds on each center foot . Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
FYI, don't toss out those old hoops, they are perfect to use for a reversed wheel build as they have the desired "bell" back side.
Update: I finally got around to working on this wheel project. Prep: I buffed the edges of the center and gave the hoop a quick sand with some 100 grit to smooth it all out. First I cut off an old axle I had to 12". I measured the desired Back Spacing and marked the axle. Then I bolted it to the center and put it in my press. You could just beat it in with a hammer and wood block but I just found the press to be much smoother. It did want to wobble with the press. I pressed it in to about 1/8" from where I wanted it. From there I used a block of wood and a hammer to tap it into place. Tomorrow I will dig out an old spindle I have in the shed and mock it up to check for run out. So far the whole process was very easy. One 15x10 wheel with 6.5" BS.
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