Last set of early Ford style steelies I got from Wheel Smith included their hubcaps which stayed on but were loose. I put a couple wraps of Gorilla tape around each of them and they stayed on and quit rattling.
if they are cheep rims and flex thell never stay on but what i do is put a strip of duct tape around the rim wheir the teeth of the hub cap grabs and this prevents it from turning and from falling off . This works very good Ray
My 1973 Lincoln Continental would do that always on the right front wheel but it's because I would corner a little hard the car was heavy and it will actually flex the rim... After I rotated the tires it would still do it to the same corner of the car.
One person I know started putting his name and phone number on the back of his pricey hubcaps, using tape and permanent marker. He also stated that a reward was offered for return of the hubcap if found. Kind of a novel approach.
It is always on the right front wheel and only the 57 Caddy caps, I currently have 56 Olds caps on the car and they never come off. First time I lost the Caddy cap it ended up in the salt marsh making it difficult to find. Second time I found it up for sale on Ebay, guy saw my post looking for it and grabbed it. Took some doing but I finally got it back from him. My wife says having those caps on the car is like wearing you best jewelry on the subway in Boston.
My old friend "Hubcap Harry" told me that he developed his stash by checking out railroad crossings and Texas gates..
GM cars; e.g. '87 Grand Prix caps w/spokes, utilized a bracket that was fastened to three of the wheel lugs under the cap. The center of the bracket was tapped. The hubcap itself fastened to the rim conventionally with the cap center drilled and bolted to the bracket beneath. Even so, the heavy cap could rotate on the wheel rim and break the valve stem where it passed through the cap. The caps never came off but the result was a flat tire.
on my old 54 chevy I had a set of 53 pontiacs and would occasionally lose a cap. I didnt think about using silicone back then. Despite my best efforts to adjust the taps on the cap id still lose one from time to time so eventually I bought some old dice valve stem caps and when I would occasionally have a cap that came loose it made a racket but it didnt fly off!!
Use early wheels with no recessed groove along the outter edge, the hubcap grabbers fall into that recess and don't hold it on, the early wheels allow the grabbers to grip.
I bought some ‘55 lancer caps on ebay recently and a previous owner had engraved his name and address into the spinner bar. Probably more for theft deterrent though.
Hello, Hubcaps pop off any rim, so, stick with factory rims if possible and those nubs are made for small center hubcaps. The inner surfaces of the steel rims are machined pretty fine and should provide a good surface for those bent clips. The key is not to bend the clips or as one pulls off the full hubcap, to be in a hurry and not wait for the last several tabs to slide off easily. It usually is not the tire, normal or radial. But, only if you get them trued. Nothing worse than an out of round tire, even if you paid top dollar or are brand new from a known tire dealer or company. Tires are just not perfectly round, despite the tolerances in machining those molds. Don't get upset when you are watching your high dollar tire leaving gobs of black shavings on the floor. It is the process and works well when finished. Now the hubcaps are normally made with good fitting clips. Back in the 50s, most cars came with full hubcaps. Some stayed on and others were instantly taken off due to the stock nature of the look. Black rims or any color matching the car, rims made it look faster than with full stock hubcaps. We used to have my brother's teenage friends come over to our house to show off their hubcaps, small, large or new. Then they would all sit back and see a "little kid" pop off the hubcaps and if possible pop them on another car to check out the different look. (I was careful not to scratch the colored rims or bend the tabs on the hubcaps.) That way, everyone was now a critic of which hubcap was the best looking for the car it just got a different one. If one guy had an Oldsmobile three prong flipper, that got moved around a lot. The Dodge Lancer 4 prong also got moved around. One guy had small, smooth center hub caps and those made the full ones look too stock, despite the flipper action movement down the street when the cars rolled away. So, if one takes care of how the full hubcap or even the small round center caps are put on and taken off, then there shouldn't be a problem. Who bashes the rims and makes scratches each time? "newish style hubcaps" Not around back then, but the new copies may pop off easier on old rims... Also, stick with original factory hubcaps and not repops. We would think repops would have the same standards as the older, but solid 50s-60s Dodge Lancer 4 prong units. Jnaki My brother had three sets on his stock Pale Yellow Oldsmobile sedan at one time or another. The original plain stock units, a purchased Oldsmobile three prong flipper set and a small round chrome center cap only. No, beauty trim piece for the outer lip. When that car disappeared after it got the screw-in moon discs, the next car to roll into our driveway was a new 58 Impala. Instantly, those full size stock hubcaps were taken off. You can’t run them at the drags anyway, so they came off and stayed off. Now, the Impala had some attitude with the stock tires and rims without full hubcaps. But, over the years of competition, we painted new colors on the rims and used different array of hubcaps or no hubcaps. By the time I was the primary caretaker of the Impala, it had stock flat center hubcaps and an extra outer trim chrome trim. That was a low cost chrome wheel that was less expensive than the real thing. We never lost a hubcap or beauty trim ring in 5 years of driving all over So Cal and into the high elevation, local mountain ranges. Note: Over the years, we did get all new tires trued round and left a lot of rubber on the trimming floor. But, as round as it became, the tires balanced well, aligned well and there was never the slightest shake or wandering all over the driving lanes. In my final high school year, this set up with small Impala center hubcaps and outer circle beauty trim rings never came off while putting on countless miles of highway cruising all over So Cal, coastal beach locations, the desert areas and up into the local mountain ranges like Lake Arrowhead or Big Bear Mountain. A good suspension set up, round tires, good balance and alignment play an important part to keep things rolling without many odd ball bumps. YRMV
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