Looking at wheel ideas for my recently acquired '32 Tudor. The car has juice brakes and, currently, 18x3-1/2" wires. While I have 5 nice 18" wires, I don't want to run wires. I am going to run steel wheels. Looking at two options, but both are steel wheels. My stupid question is can I bolt any 5x5-1/2" pattern steel wheel to the drums on my car? I've read that wire wheels on juice converted brakes need rings to seat properly. Do the wheels need a specific hub diameter to clear things? I don't think I need the/a spacer for steel wheels.
If you have 40 Ford hubs/drums you can use any steel wheels. But you will need the support rings to run the wires. Hopefully they are on there now or the wires may be ruined.
We need clear photos of the wheel mount surface of the hubs/drums to give any possible answer that is better or expands on Alchemy's answser in post 2. Simply put what did they do and change to get Hydraulic brakes on the car? Most of us would figure that they used 40 backing plates, drums and hubs but I'm thinking that there were guys converting the mechanical backing plates to hydraulic or just swapping backing plates whele keeping the stock drums. Swapping with what I have no idea. It would be serously hard to put steel wheels on the original 32 hubs/drums as they had the raised pieces to back the wheels that cause folks to need the spacers to run wires on 40 or later hubs.
If you had the stock hubs for some reason you could have someone chuck them in a lathe and cut those raised pieces off and c ut the raised part down even with the surface around the lug bolts. If they are like Model A those lug bolts are real short.
Good information to know. I may be forced to change the brakes. Won't find out till next Spring though. While I have a pole barn, it's just a glorified wind break and it's full.
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