My car came with a set of '50s mopar accessory wire wheels. They were were wearing a set of blackwall tires of the wrong profile, pretty short. It made the car look lowrider-y. I swapped on the set of stock wheels with 3" whitewall radials, and put on the repro lancer caps. However, the wheels are pretty bent up, and all are missing their center cap clips. I also have no spare. So I would like to clean up the old wires, and put them, with the wide whites, back on the car, and use one of the stock wheels as a spare. So my question is: what do I need to do to Reseal the spoke area? Does anything need to be checked on them before they go back in service? The wheels currently have a grey tape around them, 2 looks good and didn't have tubes in them, and 2 the tape has come loose and did have tubes. I saw some motorcycle sites recommend 3M extreme sealing tape, is this what is best to use? How many yards does a wheel take to wrap? Should I redo the two that the tape is still tight and clean?
Another option would be to remove all of the old tape, clean the surface good and seal around each spoke end inside the wheel with a quality silicon. Tedious and laborious , but works. YRMV.
Ok, using that math I got 13 yards, because tape will have to go around the inner and outer rows of spokes it doubles what I need. Plus 25%, for overlap and screwing up. I will get the 36 yard roll i posted, and update once I have the tires mounted.
Do I need to true these wire wheels before sealing them? Or any other spoke/nut maintenance? When the tire shop took off the old tires I asked if they were straight, and looked at them spin on the tire machine. Seemed like they were true, but they weren't spun on a balancer.
I sealed up mine on my 34 years ago with silicone, worked fine. I f you have the wheels that have the spokes laced into the rim, they are very tough to make tubeless because with the spokes laced into the edge of the rim, it is very difficult to get it to hold air enough to seat the tire on the rim.
What is wrong with using inner tubes? Rim tape to protect the tube from chafing and use radial tubes if you have radial tires, and you will never have to worry about leaks.
Not wires, but two piece spoke mags, back in the day, I just used duct tape, several layers! Worked for me! Also how much bent are they! If you put a new steel wheel on a balancing machine, you will see they have “ some” run out! I had a vibration on a ot one ton truck, found a wheel that had, what I thought, was too much runout! Bought a new wheel…..it had more runout than my original wheel had! Bones
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