Iv noticed the price of steel rims/wheels has been climing the last couple months and that nice article in hotrod deluxe maybe sparked some more intrest. this is my first Tech thread so bare with me. heres a Tech on how to get nice vintage steel wheel/wheels for cheap! ever notice the car supports created out of welded together rims at the U-pull its or the vintage car s**** yards. well alot of those rims are **** but if you look you will find some decent steelies! I managed to pick up 3 rims for the price of 25 bucks Edit: bring a stencil with the bolt pattern you need to the yard before searching.
you will need some tools first angle grinder 2x6 safty gl***es ear protection malt liquor of your choice
so to get started you will need to carefully grind the tack welds that are supporting the rim on the bolt side. lightly grind all 4 tacks in this case. after grinding pick up your 2x6 board and smack the top rim off! make sure your *** is hanging out.
after you have seperated the two wheels from each other lightly grind the remaining weld off of the top of the rim. I then proceeded to polish the grinds with sand paper.
after that process you can media blast or sand the rims you have picked up for a killer deal. in this instance I scored 2 matching rims for 12 bucks a piece. instead of the usualy 75-100 bucks a pop or the gawd awfull prices of ebay. for real steel wheels. now with all this in mind every instance will be a bit diffrent but give those old forgotten welded rims a look over and you might get a great deal.
great tip, but I think you missed something... ... when is the bolt-circle-checking done so you're sure these junkyard-wheels actually fit on the car's drumstuds... is it before or after all this work?
this is before! thanks for pointing that out. i brought a stencil with my bolt pattern to the yard before searching.
this is a great idea, i have been checking out these stands at a yard i go to and they told me $5,00 a wheel if i replace it with another one, i have an old axle end all ready to go.
don't worry, if they're the wrong bolt pattern, just sell them on epay and buy more malt beverage with the proceeds
I save all the old steel wheels I get on cars that I part out, or wherever I can find them. I'm hoarding them in my shop's ba*****t, I have stacks of them. It's always cheaper to have a m***ive supply at the ready than to buy them. Plus, a lot of old hubcaps only fit a specific rim, so that's important too.
Good Tech Heres one I built awhile back Its from a t bird center and a scottsdale rim reversed 3 1/2 backspacing The hardest part was finding two tight fitting rims still need to build the other
not schlitz but schlitz bull Ice! I usually stay away from my power tools after one of those boys there.
I searched local bone yards for steelies and only thing i found was ONE Chevy with rally wheels which wont work as i want the option of using my hubcaps…everything over 20 years old is s****ped. Also had ads up and spoke to numerous car guys. Took me two months to find some 15x7” 5x5” steelies to mount on the rear of my Olds. The wheels i got were off a ‘93 chev pickup,,got set of 4
I paid $100 for 4 rims with 3 beauty rings from Marketplace seller,,I paid $40 for 4 rims off a Malibu 15 years ago at Pick a Part. Some here may have a Kings ransom in steelies and dont know it.
Paid $250 for a clean set of stock ‘57 Chevy smoothies about a year ago. Pretty pricy but they even had original paint. It’s getting incredibly hard to find pre 80s steelies anymore
Junkyard charges 20 bucks a piece for a steelie plus a 5 dollar core. I've probably bought 3 sets for various projects. a little high but at least you don't have to deal with marketplace dippers. Swap meets are still the best. I bought a set of rollers that held air for 10 bucks.
S****yards have nothing beyond 2005 in my area…last year for a 15x7” 5x5” bolt pattern is 2003 Astro van….
The local tyre and mag wheel place nearby has a huge pile of steel rims that he lets me go through to select. These are usually from $200 cars which people have put $2000 worth of big shiny alloy rims onto.
Since everybody brought this post back from the dead. I am pretty famous for buying steel wheels at estate sales my friends like to call me the wheel King. I am by no means an expert but I don't like seeing cool steel wheels end up going to a landfill so I try to rescue them sometimes I rehome them sometimes I hoard them. Obviously I always look for 16 inch steel wheels from the 1930s and '40s you would be surprised how many are still around on Old utility trailers or laying against the back of somebody's garage wall on the outside half buried in the mud. They are usually cheaper if they have a rancid tire still stuck to them. Cool thing is on the really old tires they don't have a bead set so all you got to do is get a sawzall with a demolition blade and cut the dried out tire off so it's basically the tread and the two side walls making up three pieces of tire then you can pop them all off and throw them in the trash can very simply. Nobody wants to store an old charcoaled bias ply. But at any rate usually at an estate sale with a rancid tire they are five bucks each pretty clean wheels are a little more money (some people are crazy they think because they have a nice coat of spray paint on them they are worth $100 each). Any ford spoked wheel seems like I can get them for about 20 bucks each and when I sell them on marketplace or OfferUp it takes a while to get 50 bucks each unless it is a set of four really nice ones. The ones I really tried to hunt down these days or cut down model A Wheels that were probably done during world war II. I don't know if they are really strong or anything like that but I really like the 28-29 Wheels that have been cut down for 16" hoops. So far I have found three of them. I don't think I would run them on a high horsepower engine but right now I am on a full-on banger kick and I'm pretty sure they are good for the 80 or 90 horsepower (on a good day) that is flat four would possibly give them. Now when you get into 1950s through the 1970s steel wheel that most of us are probably thinking of when we think of a steel wheel there is actually a lot of differences between manufacturers offsets, bolt patterns, hubcap nubs and even the valve stem holes and you will find 14-in and 15 inch steel wheels pretty common and you would be amazed how many 14-in wheels without tires look like a 15-in wheel it definitely pays to bring a little small measuring tape with you when you are on the hunt out in the wild suburbs going through junk piles in some dead persons backyard. Again the wheels seem to be 5 to 10 bucks each and an estate sale, most of the estate sale people are just happy to make a few bucks on them I can't imagine there is a lot of people looking at Rusty Wheels like I do. At the local junkyards here in California I believe they are just under 25 bucks each now if they are 15s, I think 16 in wheels are 30 bucks... I got to say it's all about if you need them or not what you're willing to pay. The only time I will buy wheels from the junkyard is if I really desperate even on half price day they are kind of pricey because not only do you got to buy the wheel but they want to charge you separately for the rancid tire, if you have them pull off the tire they charge another three bucks. I get it they got to pay for labor but if you're spending 25 bucks on a wheel three bucks to get a tire dismounted then California tax, environmental impact fee and I think there is no a used fuel disposal fee all of suddenly that $25 tires like 35 bucks and it's hard to justify $140 for a set of beat up steel wheels out of the junkyard that you don't even know if they are true or not. I am always planning for the future so I usually grab them when I find them for a cheap price and then I stack them in a nice little neat stack behind my shed which is the perfect home for the black widow spiders to move into. If you're really lucky you will get the new to California brown widows and the old school black widows living underneath the same wheel. Sometimes the spiders are into inner species ******a and you will find black widows and daddy long legs living together in harmony. You can go out and sweep all the wheels off and kill every single spider you find and I swear to you within a week they are all back I don't know where they are coming from but be for warned in the warmer areas of the US they are spider condos. I am pretty big into the thrill of the hunt so I enjoy putting sets together although let me tell you when you get into 1950s GM cars all of the brands have their own wheels and then station wagons had a different wheel than the four-door sedan and the four-door sedan maybe a wider wheel if it was a bigger engine car. Real important to measure the width and pay attention to the styles from my experience. Even 8 lug Wheels get a little confusing, I just went through this a few weeks ago on my 1975 Dodge D200 pickup Originally the truck came with 16.5" Dodge Wheels, I bought the truck it had three ford wheels, one 16" Dodge wheel and the spare tire was a 16.5. The Ford Wheels had different offsets one was from a pickup truck and two were from vans. At an estate sale no joke I got lucky I found four 16-in Dodge wheels, I must have went through 300 old tires to find four that matched but I found them. I paid a little more for them I think that guy wanted $10 each but that's still pretty good compared to the junkyard I also bought some mag wheels with the intention of reselling them to make my wheels free which worked pretty good and then I sold off the Ford Wheels and they threw the 16.5 inch wheel in my utility trailer for s**** metal. This keeps going on and on every one of my cars it seems like needs new steel wheels I guess that's why my friends call me the wheel King because I always find them.
I priced out a set of steelies with caps the other day. It was within range of buying a set of aluminum Halibrand styled wheels.
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