I tried searching and came up empty. I've got 14" steelies, 2 I believe are origional, and 2 from mid 60s. I'm running Coker radials, and lost a cap this summer. I'm wondering if this is due to radials on bias wheels. I notice the wheels/caps creek when I roll it around in the garage. Should I get some late model wheels? I just got these centers and dont want to loose them.
I just did some searching this morning and found several threads on this topic. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/hubcaps-won’t-stay-on.1118271/ https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/how-to-keep-hubcaps-on.936017/ https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/explain-shoebox-ford-full-hub-caps-fall-off.569563/
I know this will sound TOO simple... but you need to lightly re-bend the "grips" on your caps with wise-grips or channel-loks to tighten them up. Your rims don't flex enough to make the caps creak...the caps are just too loose. The "grips" only need a very SLIGHT bend towards the outside rim of the cap. Bend them TOO MUCH, and you will have a hard time getting the cap on...and will end up damaging the cap trying to take it off
Follow the advice above and I have also used duct tape around the rim where the teeth on the hubcap bite in, the duct tape gives it a little more gripping power. HRP
I actually did bend all the tabs out as part of my center cap install a few weeks ago. I hope that is all I need. I really didnt want to remount the WW on different wheels. Last thing I want is a wheel failure at cruising speeds. Car wont be out of the garage until April when the snow is gone.
I've always lost my hub caps too. They'd get lost in the bushes after I put on a set of mags and threw the steelies and caps in the bushes...
Loosing them If you don’t tighten them up somehow then you’re certainly going to lose them. It’s losing them! Not loosing If you don’t want to lose them then you should definitely make sure they’re not loose.
Sometimes a light sanding and a fresh coat of paint on the wheels will give the tangs something more to grip to. Each time you put them on or off a bit of paint is scratched off. I know it doesn't sound like much, but you have already "adjusted" the tangs, now repaint the wheels. If that doesn't work, put a dab of silicone on the biting edge of about every other tang. Those center emblems look great by the way.
That was common in 70's TV shows......................... But seriously were the ones you lost off the original wheels or the mid 60's wheels? I seem to remember some older wheels having a ring either stamped or cut on the inside edge where the teeth on the cap would grab.
I had the same problem - creaking sounds and hubcap loss - on one of my customs in the past. Its due to wheel flex caused by the extra stress put on them by the radials. I just bent the tangs as much as possible to give them a firm fit on the wheel while still being able to be removed. Solved the problem. Good luck!
The duct tape trick works as well as anything. The main downside is if you decide to not use full wheelcovers at a later time, cleaning the tape residue off the rim will be a PITA. I wouldn't put all the blame on radial tires either. Wheelcovers flying off go back to since Detroit started offering them in the early '50s. Buying a 'radial tire' wheel won't fix it either IMO as more modern steel wheels if anything use thinner-gauge steel compared to older wheels. By the time radials became OEM common on cars, they had moved mostly away from full wheelcovers to 'styled' steel wheels or cast aluminum that didn't use covers. The handful of cars that still used heavy, elaborate wheelcovers sprouted spiders that allowed a extra bolt-on means of retaining them, usually disguised as a 'anti-theft' feature. Cheaper cars used plastic wheel covers where the majority of the weight was at the rim. Cover weight has more to do with it than anything else IMO. Weight that's 'cantilevered' beyond the plane of the attachment points has increased 'leverage' on the spring tangs, putting more demand on them. If the OP was having issues with losing caps before adding the emblem/trim, they'll only make the problem worse. When was the last time you saw a trim ring fly off? If I were a wheelcover kind of guy, I'd devise some sort of screw/bolt set-up to retain the covers, the trick would be hiding it.
Working in dealerships and doing new car get ready, I had occasionally had a wheel cover come off on a road test. Lincoln and T-bird wheel covers are not cheap to pay for! I would install the wheel covers and if they went on too easy, I would flip them over and gently tap on the inside of the prongs with a rubber mallet to make them bite the wheel tighter. Wheels flex on turns and spit wheel covers if they aren't tight enough. Light taps can move the prongs just enough to cure that problem for good.
Not "hub" caps. Those are "wheel covers". Noticing the main word here. Like the others have said, there is a few other threads on the subject. But in case you missed it, steel wheels are very flexible, much more than you'd think. I'd also bet that you are losing the covers with the aftermarket wheels !? I'd bet that they are more flexible than the original wheels. Whichever wheels are not...losing your wheel covers, find a second pair to match them. Mike
Buick and Pontiac used a center hub that would had a thread hole or a stud. The center emblem was threaded on and it would keep the WHEEL COVER in place. An option would be a locking nut with a corresponding key (like a McGuard). Its been 40 years since I was a tech and have only come across one set of the hubs. Of course I did buy them. A wheel cover goes over the face of the wheel and a hub cap goes over the center portion of the wheel
Yes, when I was a wrencher I remember the extra bracket which used 3 wheel lugs that had a stud which the full wheel cover bolted onto with some type of tamper proof/anti theft nut. The wheel cover center snapped over the nut to hid it. I wish I could devise a way my centers would be removable so i could drill a hole in the wheel cover and use a setup like that. Essentially bolting the full wheel cover onto the wheel. All my wheels are OEM. Two are just a few years newer, and have a slightly different offset. Deeper offest is on the rear. I've only lost the covers from the front wheels. Driver's side (left).
I have set of slotted chrome wheels, with perfect chrome, aside from w hat looked like poor polishing and grinder marks on the rims. The centers are flawless, mentioned the poor chrome work to the guy I bought them from, he said, "I did that. Kept losing wheel covers, so I hit 'em with a grinder. They still came off." So, don't go after 'em with a grinder!
Wha wha back in the day I remember a guy that had the same problem, and He Fixed so they would Never Fall off again.! He Drilled 3 holes in the Wheelcover & Screwed them ON. Just my 3.5 Centss Live Learn & Die a Fool
I seem to remember the correct Ford Wheel having a hump on the inside for the Tire bead to go over. This left a groove in the inner radi. of the wheel and the grip fingers of the correct Wheel cover actually fit into that groove, not just outboard tension of the griping fingers. Steve is correct in saying Wheel covers that extend out past the rim have much more issues staying on. I learned to much primer/paint built up in the groove adds to the Fly Away issue. Wheel balance also adds to weather you keep or loose covers as well as dents in them. I have the same wheel covers on my 59 with Radials, so far they are all still there. Mine don't have the fancy center parts.
I think that song was for the Sight Seer's driving Micro Busses. I hate those people on My mountain roads!
You're referring to the 'safety bead' found on most all wheels starting in the mid-'60s. The 'safety bead' was developed around 1940 by Chrysler but didn't come into common use until much later. My '56 DeSoto has them on its factory wheels but Ford/GM didn't adopt them until the mid-'60s. The 'safety bead' was adopted as an SAE design in the early 60s, but wasn't 'required' until the late 70s, although it was used by pretty much every manufacturer by the late 60s. In terms of steel wheels, by 68 pretty much every wheel featured the safety bead although you may or may not find them on all cast wheels until a bit later. You won't find them on any non-Chrysler wheel from the '50s that I'm aware of, the first ones I recall seeing on Ford wheels were in '64 and the first Ford application was disc brake wheels IIRC. There's a lot of confusion surrounding these. Many people think they were required for tubeless tires, but Ford/GM started using tubeless tires in the mid-'50s without these on their wheels and the design pre-dated tubeless tires by seven years. The original design intent was simply to help retain the tire on the bead under low pressure.
Many years ago, somebody lost a hubcap off a '46 Ford near my house on US 278 a couple of miles east of Rockmart GA. He never did find it. It landed in the ditch and eventually washed into a little wet weather branch that runs across the back of my property. When I found it, the plain steel portion that attaches the cap to the wheel had rusted to oblivion, but the stainless part still looked good. I dug it out of the creek bed, cleaned it up, and drilled a hole in the center. Now that '46 Ford hubcap has a second career as the top of the air cleaner on my '38 Ford pickup.
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