Technical DIY Steel Wheels - Anyone Roll Their Own?

Thinking about a “NASCAR inspired” look for my 63 Catalina but will need to do a custom offset rim to fit the narrower A Body rear end I have fitted to the car.

I could take the easy route and drop a few grand on some custom Forgelines, but I’d like to explore the possibility of grabbing some steel hoops from a wrecking yard and setting the spacing perfectly to my car. Of course I will want to stuff as much width as I can under the fenders…

With that said, anyone ever cut and weld a set of steelies to get them exactly what they want?

 

Never done it personally, but there are places that will.

 

I may have hallucinated it, but I seem to remember Robert J. Palmer has made his own wheels for his dirt tracker.

 

I put a new "hoop" on a used center for a dirt stock car. Worked out OK and held up, at least until the car was in another crash, but don't know if it would have been perfect enough to run on a smooth road at highway speeds.

Lynn

 

I've done a couple sets over the years, putting my centers in wider hoops. Not that hard really

 

Found a pic, these have been on my F-1 for 15 years or so. 8 inch hoops

 

My late Granddad split , rolled a wider band and welded up several. For cars to combines . A couple local hot rodders tested his welds and never had a failure

 

+2" diameter. Rivets are fake (real rivets, not riveted to anything). 1 pair standard width, 1 pair +1". Hoops from Hey Wheel. Were 13x4 4 on 5 1/2 ('57 Anglia) now 15x4 & 15x5. Goofy bolt pattern makes a fellow do stuff.

 

A lot of old dirt track racers did it. We did it on our first dirt track car, we bought a set of 10" wide Implement wheels and welded our centers in them. That first set was not exactly true, they wobbled a bit.
One of the older guys told me we needed a set up so we could rotate the wheels to center them. Then one of the other older guys told us he had a set up and would weld our centers in other wider hoops, or add bands to widen our old wheels for $10 each. We could choose 2" wider, or 3" wider, he said making the wheels 4" wider was too hard to do for $10. The wheels he did spun true. We didn't do any ourselves after that.

 

Fun reading...
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...fellas-you-ever-reverse-em-home-made.1168840/

 

Back then I believe it was common for racers to use two center sections together, to get a wheel that would hold up in the corners. It probably wouldn't be necessary for a street car and wouldn't look different externally.
By the way, you gave up on a lot of strength when you replaced the original rear axle with one from an A body - the 9.3" differential in 1961-1964 Pontiacs was very strong, and was often the racer's choice before the 9" Ford became popular. It probably would have cost more, but narrowing the original rear axle and shortening the axle shafts would have been my choice.
I know there's limited space inside the wheel wells of Pontiacs of that era.

 

A local guy made me a set of 15x7 and 15x8 wheels using 49/50 Chevy center sections welded into a modern hoops.
I sold the truck in the pic with non hamb friendly wheels on it. I'm going to use these on my 54 chevy sedan.

 

I have reversed wheels, narrowed hoops, widened hoops, and changed centers to different bolt pattern. Its all doable in your home shop. My tooling is an old front spindle I can clamp in the bench vice with a hub drilled for all the different bolt patterns, A dial indicator and a mig welder.
The old timers did it so can we.

 

Check the thread on 69 z/28 back to track in off topic.
A couple pics/description of how he did a set of rallys.

 

I have built 3 sets for the rears of me and my son’s cars. All of them sourcing salvage yard wider hoops and using original centers.

 

I paid a visit to Ernie Adams in Arizona who builds incredible dwarf size cars and purchased a DVD that showed how he made his 13" wire wheels for his '34 Ford sedan.

 

I recall a local guy back in the early pro-street era decided to make his own widened rear steel rally wheels. They looked good (and held air)...but required about a pound of lead to balance them (ok, a pound is an exageration...but let's say a bunch).

 

Yep, but my choice was driven by the fact that I bought a brand new, built to spec Currie 9 inch for my El Camino and it was laying around my shop with no home. It helped that it was exactly the gears I wanted for the Catalina. I was not about to buy a new center section and axles for the Cat rear when I had 2500 bucks worth of brand new 9 inch on the floor.

 

is anyone in the Bay Area doing OG centers in bigger hoops? my 61 Dodge has 14 x 5 wheels, and I want 15 x 7 or so, and I need to use the old centers because later wheels take a smaller dog dish hubcap.

 

not steelies, but we cut two 1935 16” wire wheels, added a 50mm (2”) wide rolled 4 or 5mm flat to make them 6” wide rather than 4” wide.
I thought the engineer cut them in a lathe for balancing reasons.

We widened them inwards, so the profile of the hubcap looks the same as the stock front ones…………
.

 

Look at the front and rear wheels, my Dad made these for his Midget 1973, M & H tire came out with wider race tires, all his Magnesium wheels were 4/5" wide, wheels 12" Diameter at that time. Not lightweight but they served the purpose

 

Ah. I thought you were talking about a factory A body rear, if it's a Currie 9 inch that's a different story.

 

Gramps looks quite fetching in his shower cap.

 

I reworked a set of smoothies to give the exact backpacking I needed on my non Hamb suspension.

Cut the centers out of the fronts flipped the rim around welded up the valve stem and redrilled them to clear everthing
Rears got a 5" back space that clears the calipers by about a 1/8"

Trued them with a stick on a jack stand balanced them on a bubble balance before mounting tires.

 

This thread is pure gold! Thanks guys!

 

Did it a couple of times. First in the late fifties when I reversed a set for the rear of my high school '51 Ford. Everybody who saw them was impressed, so we made a few more sets. They became so popular that the local junkyard (and sometime speed emporium) "Carmichel Auto Parts" in Excelsior began taking orders for them. They'd supply the wheels and I'd reverse them. I would only do riveted wheels as I had no way to handle welded wheels. I even got to putting Buick rims on Ford centers, but they didn't fit well, and I have to admit it, I "fudged" them by "pie-cutting" the centers and forcing them together. Nothing bad ever happened, and I think the statute of limitations has run out over the last 60 years, so I can finally "come clean". I had a jig I could spin them on, so at least they always ran true. Unfortunately, the valve stem hole ended up on the backside. Most buyers put up with that inconvenience because of the clean look with no valve stem sticking out.

My second time was in the nineties when I was vintage dirt track racing. We ran on a large variety of tracks. With a locked rear end, we needed a lot of different diameter rear tires to get the proper "stagger". Since re-mounting tires at the track is impractical, I needed extra rear wheels. Back in those days, "Speedway Motors" sold wide five centers along with a good selection of wheel "shells". I made probably 6 or 8 rear wheels over a couple of years. I've looked around a bit lately, and it seems the selection of wheel components is currently very limited.

 

1958
Hello,

Our 7 inch wide Bruce Slicks fit inside of the rear wheel opening of the 1958 Impala. It made the difference in quicker times and speeds in the quarter mile. It was a good looking set of slicks.
Any old photos with all black rear wheels had those 7 inch wide Bruce slicks on for the timed runs.

The slicks were mounted on steel rims, fit right under the opening and did not rub against any of the underneath structures or lip. They also were well made and took very little balancing weight. They instantly made the Impala faster in the time trials. But, for the eliminations, we switched back to the stock tires as per the rules.

So, when my brother and I started our 1940 Willys Coupe project in late 1959, he had plans for the future of this first build.

He had the local machine shop, Henry’s Machine shop in Bixby Knolls, make some wider steel rims with Chevy bolt patterns. We supplied the two rims and the machine shop made the wider inserts. They had a machine to make wider rims, align them correctly, and balance them when complete. We knew we had a great set for our future wider slicks.

By the time we were ready to use the rims, there were two companies that made wider slicks, Bruce and M&H. A lot of folks were going to the newer M&H slicks. So, we had a larger size set of M&H slicks ready for pick up at a warehouse in Los Angeles at the end of July 1960. But, in August, all new mags and slicks were sent back to the dealers.


Jnaki

But, things happen and so, within several months, I placed an ad to sell all of our stuff, including the custom wide steel Chevy bolt pattern rims. They sold fast… But, I kept the Bruce Slicks for the 58 Impala midnight races as an incentive for faster starts.

Those slicks still grabbed well and had a lot of mileage left for the new teenage friend who was now, the owner of the fast 1958 Chevy Impala. YRMV
Although, now the rims were all black steel Buick bolt pattern rims... that is another story...

 

A big lathe is your friend. I have a brake drum lathe, mainly for modifying wheels and polishing aluminum/ mag wheels. In the late 70's, a friend had a contract with E-T wheels to fix out of spec or wobbly wheels, had big racks of them out back waiting. They made a bunch for 65-66 Mustangs, using the 10-hole 69 Mach1 wheels, swapping 8" or 10" rims onto the original centers, heavily inset, and moved the inner fenderwell in

 

I have made wheels off and on for over 50 years. I have one pair of Mopar cop car wheels that I widened to 13" that have been on the same car for over 35 years without problems. I have built a couple sets of 16 inch 7" wide hoops from a pickup on early Ford centers. I just recently sold my plate roller that I used for rolling bands. I also sold my modified brake drum lathe that I cut the rims on, and turned the weld off the centers. I still have my welding jig for getting them straight.

 

I can “roll my own” but it doesn’t have much to do with wheels!