Swapping Rims Around on Steel Wheels

Ages ago, in the days of Hot Rod Mechanix, I saw an article on swapping the rims on early Ford steel wheels to a smaller diameter, wider rim (16x4 to 15x7 or something). This was done to provide an early Ford bolt circle and the ability to run radial rubber. Contrary as it may seem, I'm interested in doing the opposite; swapping an early Ford rim onto a late-GM center in order to run the tall, skinny bias plies I crave on a late-model axle. My concern is that the 15" center may be too small for the 16" rim. On the other hand, I don't recall them having to turn down the Ford center to fit the late-model rim, so perhaps they're the same size? Does anyone know anything one way or the other? Thanks.

 

Did that very thing on my front rims, wheel vintiques didn't actually make a 16" narrow enough for me, so i used 40 Ford outer rims & vintique centers.
The rivets in the original rims were a real****** to get out & when they did the flimsy rim twisted like a banana, so we set it up in a 30 ton press with the center sitting on blocks to give the desired backspacing, then filled the old rivet holes with weld & run four 5" beads of weld at equal spacing to finish off.
After i was interested to see how true they were so i put them on a balancer without tyres, almost perfect & no run-out, been on for a couple of years now....no problems.

 

I'm planning on doing the same thing.So far I got some 16"X 6" ford pickup rims and removed the centers. I going to use `52 chevy centers. I have access to a lathe and plan to cut the the chevy rim down to fit inside the pickup rims. This wiil leave about a 1/4" of the chevy rim on the center. Set up a hub and a dial indicator and weld them up. I was not able to find a 16" rim with a drop that would fit the `52 15" centers.

 

I widened two 39 ford/wide fivesfrom 4"to to 6".I could not find any rims that were same size [inner] dimension as a stock 39 ford center. I finally "split" a 16" rim from an 88 chevy half ton and used the outer half of stock 39W center- and the inner half of the late model chevy truck wheel.