I have a pair of older cragars with what appears to be an alignment ring for a specific lug pattern. One of the wheels has a broken alignment ring, and the other wheel is missing it. Is it safe to run these wheels without this ring? Can I get new alignment rings for these. The 3 more modern wheels I have don't have a recess for that alignment ring. The newer ones just rely on the lug nuts to align the wheels.
They look like unilug, I think. You align them with washers specific to your bolt pattern. Still available
I think you need something in there to take up the space to keep from crushing the wheel around the lug nut.
No, you can't run those early unilug cragars without the adapter ring. and no they are no longer available new. sometimes they show up on ebay. this is what the adapter ring looks like, it goes in from the back of the wheel
I never saw anything like that, and I've had a lot of Unilug wheels. The lug nuts would still need washers since they'd just pull through unlike the offset washers that go on the front, and I would think that style must really make the lug area a lot thinner, too. Interesting, but I don't know how good I'd feel about running those, even if I had the correct adapter rings.
those are real early, they did not use that style for very long, the lug nuts are the same, the adapter is bored for the outer diameter of the lug nut to go thru....
I note the partial "adapter" insert like the one that Moriarity is showing us. Perhaps shank-type lugnuts of the correct width are required to center/locate the studs. (?)
sure would not run those wheels just because of pitting in chrome. also, all wheels not uniform. centers of wheels easily collapse in a wreck. you wheels may have Cragar caps but, may not be real Cragars.
Technically, those weren't 'Unilug' wheels, that was a copyrighted and patented design by ET. Several other wheel companies tried to bootleg copy them (Cragar first among them) and most stopped when sent a cease-and-desist order. Except Cragar... ET aggressively defended their patent successfully and Cragar was forced to pull them off the market which is why there are no new replacement parts available. What makes this particularly interesting is Cragar apparently tried three different designs (the two shown here, as well as one using single inserts at each lug) to get around ETs patent, none of which withstood legal scrutiny. I believe that ET did license their design to Keystone later, but refused Cragar due to the acrimony from the lawsuit. Cragar's final 'uni-fit' design didn't use inserts which seemed to be the sticking point. Some creative machine work could probably make them usable, but given their condition it hardly seems like it would be worth it.
Cragar wheels had steel inserts cast into the aluminum centers and the centers are welded into the steel rims via welding at the steel inserts. The wheels in the picture here have the rim attached to the center via indenting the steel into voids cast into the aluminum center. To put it bluntly, every wheel assembled via indenting was junk because the center would get loose in the rim over time. Best place for that pair is in the trash.
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