I've always ***umed that you shouldn't run early ford spoke wheels on a ride with a lot of horsepower. Well, I've never asked anyone who would know for sure so I figured I'd ask you guys. I'm trying to wrap my head around building a '36 Chevy pickup in the style of a salt flat/round track roadster. It's going to powered by a '69 Pontiac 400/turbo400 trans/9in rear, so I was wondering if putting a set of early model A wheels is out of the question. What do you think????
I saw a guy leave a show a while back with model A wheels... Straight spokes... Little 283 chev and narrow tires. He got on it hard; shoved half a dozen spokes through the rear tire and twisted the center of the wheel out. Later wire wheels were all crosslaced with bent spokes. Run later wheels with the evolved safety features. If you keep a moderate tire size and grip the later wheels will be fine. For higher horsepower and lots of traction look at a set of new nostalgia themed Daytons or something of the like. -2 cents.
Did you take pictures? Just askin' .... I've seen a lot of tire-burnin' hot rods with early ford spoked wheels and that's a very unusual happening (with wheels in good condition, not junk).......
It's done a lot. Don't ask the people that sell aftermarket wheels that question though. LOL. I think I would run Chivvy wires, too hard to adapt wood spoke wheels to your particular ride.. . As far as strength; It's curious that when I googled wheel failures, it seems that NOBODY has ever taken the time to do***ent that. Of the hundreds of failures on Google, I couldn't find a wire wheel failure of 1930s vintage there. There must have been some?? I do know that in all of my years, I have never seen one. I have seen the valve stems ripped out of the tubes when the tire slipped on the wheel with the result causing great trama to the rims..................
Some of the early 60's Ferrari GTOs came with wires (Boranni?). But I think they had about a zillion spokes each! Gary
Model A wheels weren't safe on a Model A! That's why you see so many '35 wires, everybody upgraded to them when their A busted its wheels. Stu Hilborn broke his back when the rear Kelsey unstrung itself at about 150 MPH on the lakes. That was with flathead power. Old wires are OK on a nostalgia flathead rod, but 400 cubes? Give your head a shake.
No, I wish I did! Keep in mind, that I am talking about model A wheels only with the Outer straight spokes. I wish I got it on video. The only spokes to pierce the tube were the straight spokes on the outer, about 6 of them all in a row. The aftermath looked like the wheel had twisted alot; kind of like when you accidentaly back over a bicycle.... Makes some sense to me, a straight spoke shouldn't be able to handle directional torque... The A wheels, do however, have cross-derectional inners; so I can only guess the failure was due to the torque transmitted. Later, fully cross spoked wheels in my opinion should be just fine until you are running too much motor with too much traction. -Yes, the wheels on the link should work great; but don't discount later ford wires.
Just for fun, I tried several google searches for failures as well, and could not produce any pictures. Interestingly enough however, with a search of "straight laced wheel failure" many come up from bicycles and motorcycles with torque and straight laced spokes (like an A's outers). Still my 2 cents. Stick with cross spokes all the way around.
Braking torque is often greater than driving torque at the wheel, so it's not just a rear-wheel issue! It's important to distinguish between straight spokes vs bent spokes on one hand, and radial(i.e. straight)-laced spokes vs cross-laced spokes on the other. Straight spokes will be stronger than bent spokes, all else being equal, because the only deal with tension. Straight-lacing them will, however, put more tension in them in certain situations than cross-lacing them will. That's why cl***ic high-performance wires had cross-laced straight spokes. Unless, of course, you're Ettore Bugatti. Then you have radial-laced wire wheels whose spokes deal only with lateral/vertical forces because driving and braking torque are handled by splines on the rim that engage with the brake drum ...
There was a pic in a mag a couple of years back (cant remember which mag) of a guy at a show who had just destroyed a Model A wheel on his bucket. The '35 16" wires will be inherently stronger because of the shorter spokes, but the A 19" and 21" wheels are asking for trouble, IMO.
Yup, and so did the E type Jaguar, with about 250Hp. Even the humble British MG sports car had them, and even those would be safer than an original eighty year old wire wheel. Personally I would not even attempt using original wires on anything but a mild restoration, even if they were fully rebuilt.
Will these wheels stand up to the punishment? http://wheelvintiques.myshopify.com/products/street-rod-wire-bare-72-series 16x6 with 6.00x16 tyres They will be going on a late 30's pickup with an LS3 (383ci) and a six speed.
At least they are brand new wheels, they have not been sitting out in the rain for eighty years. See what Vintique say about speed and load ratings. I could not find anything on their website There are still practical limits to what a wire wheel can handle. Even the high performance street bikes have moved over to alloy wheels these days.
I had a mate in the 60's put an SBF (260-289) in an MGA. The car handled the power alright, except for the wire wheels. He ended up swapping his wires for a set of MG steelies cause he kept bending and breaking spokes. Cheers, Glen.
Not to drag this out... I had a friend in college (a salesman at an import dealer of all things!) who had a racing MG-TC/D 4-banger. I was a factory car from England and it had steel disc wheels. Gary
I've got 700 16s on my rear bent spoke Kelsey Hayes rims powered by an LT-1. The tire just smokes when you nail it. There is not enough traction to stress the rims. There is about a 4"X4" patch of rubber contacting the ground. If you widen the rim and add some cheater slicks then I might get concerned but for most us it's nothing to fret about. IMHO
I've had a lot of experience with knock off wires on English cars. They look great, but are not the best for heavy cars, high speed, or high horsepower applications. I "fixed" an evil handling, twitchy XJ6 once by taking off the bolt on wires and replacing them with stock steel wheels. Wires simply "flex" a lot more than you might think, no matter how many spokes you have. "Traditionally", sporty car racers would replace their wires with steel wheels. The faster factory cars like the Twin Cam MGA and the D-type Jag had knock off steel wheels. The earliest Ford GT40's had wires which turned out to be the source of many of the car's handling problems. If I were building a serious HP hot rod or going racing, I think I would skip the wires of any kind. If it was a cruiser, no problem.
It isn't the power you have to worry about, it's the weight. When you throw a car into a corner a tad fast, there's a lot of side load on the wheels. Wire wheels flex a lot, so much so that you can actually feel the difference in the ride with wires over steelies. That's one reason Henry used them! Look at any Model A wheel that's been driven a lot. There's going to be cracks in the paint on both ends of the outer spokes. Paint doesn't bend!
I have a set of those style wheels. Fronts are 15x5, rears are 15x10 with a 30" tall tire on them. That translates to a lot of tire to turn. The car has a ZZ4 Chevy engine, that's 355 horsepower and 400 ft lbs of torque. After 6 or 7 years of hard driving, the wheels have held up flawlessly. Fred
A lot of things have changed in 80 years, and while wire wheels may be cool, they are not going to stand up very well to the sort of punishment modern tires, suspensions, and engines are going to give them.
I've seen people do some crazy **** on spoked wheels. I used to work on this one, and I'd cringe every time he threw it off into a corner. Yes, those are wood, not billet aluminum. I know you were asking about wires. You might ask these guys how they hold up... http://trackthoughts.com/?p=248
Yep; Wire wheels are ****. They are almost all gone, ate up by big motors that ripping the spokes right out of them. It's a daily occurrence, I personally witnessed fifteen of them collapse at just one car show this spring, can't figure out why people keep insisting on using them!........................................ How do I know that? Heard it on HAMB, of course!
Heres a challenge to any one of you peeps that have a hot rod with 5on5.5 hubs. Put your money where your mouth is. I have a pair of Ford, (1933/34), 17 inch with tires mounted Ill sell you. Put them on your hot rod, video all of the testing, and burn the tires off of them. In addition to the video of all operations, your testing must be witnessed by someone that will ***ert that the operation was under normal hot rodding conditions, burnouts, etc., up to left lane traffic speeds (75-80). No overloading of the vehicle, no trailer pulling, just normal hot rodding. Any and all failures must be clearly on video, in real time. If the wheel spokes fail before you destroy the tires whilst doing all of that, Ill return your money. Guaranteed.
I've seen an old Ford promotional photo of a 35 or 36 Ford sedan hanging up in the air from one rim. Anyone else see that, or have it? It might be in the Ford Road, but I don't have that book on me.
What aren't you getting? The question is "A" wheels with straight (radial) laced outers. And yes, I would run your wheels.. They are not the "A" wheels in question; A's are not 1933 to 1934....
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