Technical What is it I have ???

Acquired these and the story goes came off a Willy's drag car in the very early 60's and replaced by aluminum or magnesium wheels. They measure 16" x 3 1/2" with a 4 1/2" bolt circle. They are steel and looks like they started out chrome and then some kind of pale yellow later on. Centers are riveted to the hoop. New one on me...sure someone on here has seen these in days gone by

 

looks like early mopar bud style rims..if so theyre worth a pretty penny..

 

I plan on a citric acid bath for them in the future, are in pretty good shape all things considered.

 

Willys wheels with 5 holes added & chromed is my guess ...

 

Comes up on ebay as Willy's wheel. But did Willy's have such a small bolt pattern?

 

Yes the Willys bolt pattern is 4 1/2" a few guys back in the day would take stock wheels and drill lightening holes like those. Pretty cool for a 37-42 gasser running steel wheels. Looks like they took the hub cap clips off also

 

Willy`s had 4-cylinders in them from the factory.

 

True. In my quick look at images with a positive id, the bolt patterns were larger and without clips for hub cap.

 

Only identifying marks on them is 16 x 3.50 stamped in them. Hey at least now I can say I have part of a Willys !

 

My vote stock Willys with holes drilled.

 

If you take a picture looking perfectly straight at the wheel, we might see that the holes are not perfectly spaced?

 

"Hole-y Early Willys Wheels, Batman!!!

Say THAT 5 times, real fast.

 

Maybe they came off of this one

 

That is quite possible, it was a Wisconsin based car it came off of. Nice investigating !!!

 

Now that I know what I'm looking for that has to be the car, Remember the name Mike Marinoff and think he had a speed shop on the south side of Milwaukee. Thanks again, guess I have a real small piece of local racing history.

 

Jim , they are a bit off when I looked at them a little closer.

 

The wheels on the Willys in the pictures have smaller holes than the picture in the original post, but that doesn't mean they weren't drilled larger at some point.

 

AH! Who cares about a little wheel imbalance at about 120 mph?

 

They could well be a copycat version of the ones on the gasser. With a bit of "he has holes so I am going to have bigger holes". Cut the holes in the wheels and haul them to the local chrome shop to have them plated.

 

I think the wheel's on Marinoff's car might have been destroyed in the crash. But that doesn't mean he didn't have extras.

 

Found out the guy who had bought the Willys with these wheels on it ( probably as rollers) is still alive up in northern WI. The guy I got the wheels from is going to try get a hold of him, he supposedly is to have pictures of the car from back in the day. This may take a bit to get through to him though. If the Marinoff car was totaled, then this would be a completely different car as I know the current owner of it. Sadly it got converted to street use early in the 1970's and lost it's charm, shall we say. Current owner has no previous photos of it.

 

The pattern seems evenly spaced, but you can see in the photos some holes were machined closer to the center of the wheel than others.

 

I was just interested in how imperfectly spaced they were, as evidence that the holes were not part of the original wheel manufacturing process.

 

So I have not given up on this and found a good source of correct information and photos. Turns out the car was raced in Colorado, possibly Denver area( that part is foggy on my source but for sure CO ) This is the guy who brought it back from CO in the late 60's early 70's and then turned it into your typical early 70's street rod complete with corvette rear end. Took a while to get photo's with a couple non tech savvy mid 70 year olds. Glad I have the photo's I have, Maybe someone can now recognize the car from back in the day.

 

That first pic is just mean looking, level vs nose high stance

 

Well, now that you obtain the front wheels, where do you go from here?

 

Guess a Willys coupe is in your future.
Can't be that hard to find,right?

 

I know where this car currently is, but the owner had no clue of it's history. It would be a huge undertaking taking the car in it's current state, to convert it back to 60's cool. Glad I now know how the car looked, when it had the wheels I now have back in the day. I have enough projects already !