Who welds wheels 'round here?

[Don'tCallMeJimmie]

Here being greater St. Louis.

I have a bit of a self-imposed/unique problem. Because I used race hardware, the wheel studs on my rear axle are 5/8".

I have a couple of options.

I can swap them out for drive studs and use alloy wheels.

I can use circle-track wheels to go with my circle-track driveline, but they aren't DOT and aren't necessarily street worthy. However, careful shopping nets me a 14" wide wheel for less than $200 each so hard to argue.

Third option is to pick up wheel shells and centers from someone like Speedway. The sticky part there is finding someone that is qualified to fab wheels from those parts. This is a truly cheap option before we get to the fab part though, like $50 per wheel in a 15X14 setup AND I would get to set them at any backspace my heart desires.

Whatchoo think? And more importantly, where can I get this work done by someone in my area that does it on a regular basis rather than "I'd really like to try that sometime" does it?

I would think that a circle-track shop would be the place to go, but who?

 

[Youngster]

Years ago I had a local roundy round shop make up a set of wheels for me and it worked out great. The back ones where 12" ring with an astro type flat center and the fronts where 3"rings from some foreign car i found at the bone yard and welded the flat centers in. Painted them with the body color, stripping and chrome lugs. Had lots of folks askin where i bought them.

Ron

 

[Brucer]

any certified welder could do it, actually just someone that could weld good can do it... you might have to help him with the setup on the backspacing.. friend of mine use to make his own wheels from the speedway rims and centers, he just mig welded them..

 

[RPM]

Getting the centers straight will be a bigger problem. If you get much run out on the rim part side to side you will get a vibration.

Years ago the hot set up in the gasser cars was a 3/4 ton Chevy truck rear. Well they were 8 lug and the 8 lug wheel was a split rim. A spilt rim would not pas tech at the track. So you cut the center out of the split rim and used the rim from something else and welded them together. The biggest problem was getting it all straight.

 

[Brucer]

he used an arbor press, and had a small fixture made from a piece of tubing and a round plate.. it was 5 inches tall to hit 5 inches of backspacing... he pressed them together, then welded with a 200amp mig welder.. he painted the rims, and used chrome beauty rings and baby moons, made nice looking wheels cheap.

 

[GAB]

I need to do a set of wheels myself for this pile of parts that resides over here in the corner. I'll make a fixture that keeps everything centered and the correct backspacing and use it to tack them together. I've got a powered rotary table that will make the TIG welding a lot easier. I hope. Pair of 15 x 8's and pair of 15 x 4's.

 

[oldtman]

Back in the day we made our own. chrysler , lincoln or buick outers, inners to what we needed. I did a couple for my dunebuggy. rear wides for the willys. Real backyard, a lot of the rims were rivited together.some guy used the rivet holes to align them. . I had a big wood beam and an axle shaft and used It like a lathe used a bracket to hold the torch to cut down inners when needed then a bracket to hold a body grinder to smooth up the cuts. hammer together then use a scribe clamped to check for runout. adjust with horseshue nails,,,mini wedges.,, tack weld, then stagger the welding patern. Later the high school shop got a big gov't surplus lathe and a few kids were wheel specialists.