For anybody that’s visited my profile, it’s obvious that I like tall and skinny, wood or wire. I do like the rear tires to fill the fenders. I’m bored to death by people that continually tell me my spoke wheels won’t hold up to the loads. The reason for the offer in post #27 with the 17” wires is because that's what I have. If I had a pair of Model A wheels with tires mounted to sell, (but I don't), my offer in post #27 would still stand. It would be a fun exercise for me. I'm not saying they wouldn't fail in no uncertain terms, but to anybody that wanted to try it, just for ****s and grins, I would like to see the do***entation of such a failure (since I've never witnessed one yet). Other than that, it’s no skin off my ***, one way or the other. In my experience the 21 inch wheels can stand all the weight and abuse that the narrow tires they were designed for will stand. As the years went by, the diameters got smaller and the rims got wider to accept the tires with larger footprint. If you have a do***ented failure to the contrary, show me, just don't cite bicycle wheel failures or cite comparisons of hell-bent salt flats failures of the distant past with what I'm talking about, which is ordinary hobby driving around town, doing burnouts and such. In ‘46 when nine years old, my dad taught me to drive the Model A pickup. We hauled grain, hogs, and once a year drove to the depot to get our annual winter supply of coal. The springs bottomed out with the grain or coal. We drove it over unimproved/rutted roads, sometimes one’s head would bounce against the roof. On occasion over the next several years we blew out a few tires, but never busted a wheel. In other Model As, my brothers and myself drove them hard and put them away wet. Over sage brush chasing rabbitts and coyotes, doing donuts till we ran out of gas, etc, never broke a wheel.
I have been running 19” wires for nearly 3 years, travelled 20,000 Kilometres , I’ve driven it hard, done burnouts , driven on rough roads, and been sideways at high speed. I check my rims regularly and have never found any cracks. I’ve been told by many people the rims will fly apart but never seen or spoken to anyone that has actually witnessed this happening, I’ve also googled model A rim failures with no results. My Model A coupe is running a modified 460ci Ford Bigblock
Not sure about early model A - I run the Kelsey Hayes 40 "Bent Spoke" wheels on my 35 Coupe which has 300 hp. The KH wheels are riveted in place and the spokes are bent to enter the rim straight in. The thought behind this is that they are stronger than the stock 35 wire wheel which spokes are welded at angles to rim with less spoke count.
A friend of mine is running the Kh bent spokes On a 34 coupe with a 700ci Bigblock making over 1000hp , another guy I know is running 17” wires with a 598ci Bigblock making 800hp, both driven hard and never had any problems.
The Jalopy Journal
