Steel wheels: How to tell if a used rim is OK?

I bought a set of clean used steel rims for a project and I'm ready to sandblast and powdercoat them.

Before I spend the $ I'd like to make sure that the rims are good- they look fine, but since I bought them without any rubber from someone I don't know i'd like to make sure that they aren't out of round or otherwise messed up.

I'm lost since my fave local tire shop (Tred Mill Tire Mart, R.I.P.) closed up.

any advice is appreciated!

 

go to another tire shop and spin them on the balancer, or you could bolt it to your car and give it a whirl, you should be able to see if it's bent or not.

 

Before you spend any money make sure they fit your car .
Offset and brake clearance ..FYI

 

Hmm, ok- a visual inspection will be good enough?

Re: fitting on the car... these are almost identical to the rims on there now... they're just the slotted version of the rim instead of the plain wheel. Should fit.

 

Powdercoating is not cheap....I'd take them to another tire shop and have them put them on the balancer beforehand to make sure.

 

put them on your car, clamp something to the a arm that almost rubs then spin it. i would say 1/16" or 1/8" is ok. if you wanna get fancy you can use a run out gauge to check it.

 

this is what i would do. i laced wheels with me grandfather for years. just put something on the side of the wheel and on top as close as you can and give it a spin. you'll get a good idea if there good.
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Yea bolt circle is important. Also as earlier stated out of round is also important.

What is most overlooked is warpage or twisting. This situation can be balanced but will still cause you problems at highway speed.

Take it from Trucked Up, long before I was Trucked Up I was known as Tire Baby/Tare Baby here in the hills of Kentucky.

 

Just get tires and spin balance them .You'll know then

 

A visual spin on a balancer will probably be alright...If you really want to get serious you could find someone with a Hunter GSP RoadForce balancer and have them check the wheel in the "bare rim" mode....this can give you total indicated runout as well as lateral runout of the wheel....
sam

 

You might be suprised to see just how much runout a bare steel wheel has, both side to side and up and down. I have measured new steel wheels with quite a bit of runout, but they balance just fine, once the tires are mounted.

 

Thanks all- this is exactly what I was looking for.

 

Can you define "quite a bit", please.

 

Almost only counts with horse-shoes and hand grenades.

 

That 'almost' is exactly why I'm trading 'em out.

I'm building up the car in my avatar- a homebuilt racer from the 50's. The rims currently on it are british rims probably off a Morris Minor. I'm swapping them out for first-series Bugeye Sprite rims.. identical to the others except that the Sprite rims are slotted. Gotta love the look of slotted rims on 50's sportscars!...

 

Make sure the lug faces are good too. When dealing with 40 year old wheels, there has got to be at least one jack*** in the history.
I'd spray a quick guide coat on that area and tighten them down to check the pattern.

 

for example...

 

Most all of the guys have given pretty good advice.

When I worked at the Pontiac dealership in Waco in the early 70's I spent a fair portion of a lot of days checking the runout on rims an tires.

I'd do as the other guys said and either bolt the bare rim to the hub on the car and turn it with something standing up next to it to check runout both ways on the rim. I have no idea what is acceptable on those wheels as far as runout but your sources for those cars should be able to produce that.