Technical WHEELS, "How To Reverse Wheels"

It was too late to fix the old post so I cut and pasted it here. Hopefully it is worthy for the techomatic......

OK, It has been awhile since I have had a BLEEDSTER update. For those who care, I will have a BIGTIME update in a week or so, but for now it is Custom Wheel time!

I am on a budget for the Bleedster and wanted "reversed" wheels on the back. I had a set of 52 Chevy wheels that I wanted to use so I figured I would try to "reverse" the back ones. I took some pics and they turned out pretty well so here goes!

Here is the stock wheel sandblasted...



Basicly, you have to pull the center part of the wheel out and flip it around. You end up with a nice deep dish.

Start by drilling out the rivits




Then pound the center out with a Big hammer being careful not to bend anything.




Then line up the holes and carefully Pound the center in backwords. When the holes start to line up, Take a punch and "True" them up. Then it will look like a wheel again only "reversed"





Now before you weld it, you have to make sure it is true. It would be a good idea to put it on a balancer to make it perfect, but I just stuck it on the front of the Bleedster and spun it.

I eyeballed it and when I was sure it wasn't wobbling I welded up the back side. Then I welded up the rivet holes. You need to make sure these are welded good otherwise you will have a leak. If your welds have pin holes, stick some JB weld over it or something else that will seal it up. My welds were fine.





Now it is reversed. All that is left is to weld up the valve stem hole and drill a new one in the front. Then paint it up and have it mounted!





So there you have it. The tires mounted with no problem and they balanced out fine.

This is a cheap, TRADITIONAL, and cool way to customise your wheels! I personally think they look better than the aftermarket reversed wheels. The dish has a nice shape to it, where as the aftermarket ones are kind of squared off.

Hopefully this will be of use to someone, if not at least I got to try out the "new" HAMB!!

 

nice nice thanx for sharing

 

So how did you handle the air nipple hole, DId yoy just weld up the old one and drill a new one in? i am guessing that is what you did?

 

VERY NICE!!!!!!!!!! Did you do the paint fogging too? Excellent job and beautiful series of pics. Sure hope people appreciate what you just posted!!!...more please!...hatch

 

A minor fifties east-coast trend was to just leave the valve stems on th backside of the wheel, making for a slick front but lots of backing up, groping, and swearing at the filling station air pump. Nowadays, with tires that often wear out before losing any air, that wouldn't even be very impractical.

 

i really like the paint on those.

good show.

 

Good stuff Bob!

 

Ryan, this should go into the tech-o-matic section

 

that was one of the most hardcore things I have ever seen. That just rocks!!! Thanks for the schooling..

 

Thanks guys. This is a repeat post that I did a few months ago. The pics got messed up on the old one and the editing time had expired so I redid it on this new thread for the techomatic.

 

Bob,

do you still have pics of this wheel reversed and dimensions of what the backspacing and offset ended up being?

All of the image links are broke.

 

13 yr bump. Damn, we might have a new record!

FWIW, I'd like to see pics of Bleeds DIY reversed wheels too.

 

You know what they say, no pix = didn't happen. Why aren't the photos from old threads saved? Gary

 

If you wanted to chrome them, would you do it while they were apart, or after the wheel is back together?

 

Apart, crome struggles to get into small gaps like where rim meets centre. Someone will say it can be done but it’s not optimal in my opinion.