STEEL WHEEL Pic thread: (These puppies get pricey in a hurry)

It's funny how we convince ourselves that steelies are a cheap wheel option when the truth is that they aint cheap at all. By the time I buy Wheel Vintiques OEM steel wheels, powder coat them, buy outer beauty rings, spider caps and center rings, along with stems, lug nuts and one wheel lock per wheel, I'll be into these for almost $900....$225 per wheel.

I'm not complaining, just kind of kick myself for thinking that I was getting off cheap.

Post your pics...Let's see some nice steel wheel combos.

 

I dunno, mine were cheap. Maybe $6 or $7 total?

Four steel wheels I had laying around from various vehicles, couple sanding discs and a can of black rattle can.

 

These are wheels I have on my 32 Ford Roadster. I also received this past week my tires from Coker Tires black wall bias ply 16x7.50 and 16 x 4.25 and paid $850 including the tubes. I found a set of 4 smooth 16x4 on e bay for $300 + powder coating $125.total cost $1,225 for the set these will be for my next project 1929 Track T.

Frenchy

 

sorry man but aint no way in hell id pay 900. for stock lookin steel wheels.they are out there and cheap, just gotta look. i buy 14 and 15 inch steel wheels when i find them wether i need them or not. ford or chevy i buy them.not too long ago we used to throw them by the truck load in the mississippi river. started grabbing beauty rings also. some people still give you the one or 2 they have hangin on the wall.

 

I couldn't find what I needed anywhere. 5 x 4.75 bolt pattern is tough to find in a boneyard or on Craigslist. I also needed 15 x 7 front and 15 x 8 rear. Also had to have a minimum of 4" backspace. Also didn't want dual bolt pattern. I looked for a couple months and ran out of time.

I have 6 lug steel wheels and reverse chrome steelies, I have 5 x 4.5 bolt pattern and I have 5 x 5 bolt patterns, and I have two 5 x 4.75 bolt pattern that I found in a junkyard that are 15 x 5" wheels. The beast I was looking for didn't exist anywhere but in a catalog.

 

For a grand, I'll spend a day or 2 making steel wheels if I cant find them. 15X7 and 15X8 wheels to rob the hoops off of can be found all day long for next to nothing on CL.

For me, its nothig to do with pride, or being cheap, I simply do not have that kind of coin to drop on steel wheels.

 

I wish I was able to build my own wheels, but I wouldn't trust my wheel building or welding skills.

 

I have been lucky, I guess, but have been regularly finding 5 X 5.5 pattern Ford steel wheels (both 15 " and 16") in out-of-the-way places. These are the older ones that have inner nubs to hold the hubcaps on. I also frequently find 1940's MOPAR steel wheels with the 5 X 4.5 lug pattern. None of these wheels has cost much. People where I look are glad to have someone actually pay for these oldies. I wonder if the the MOPAR steelies will fit on an 8 inch Ford rear end brake drum? Anybody know?

 

Mine fit fine.

 

There is no question that tires and wheels are a major expense when building a car. I typically run steel wheels with trim rings and small early Ford caps, and even going with a simple setup like that it is easy to drop a couple thousand on the whole setup. You figure....


4 tires from Coker ( 2 5.60's and two Firestone slicks) ......$1100

4 new wheels (2 5 inchers and 2 7 or 8 inchers) ..............$300

Trim rings..................................................................$100

Hub caps...................................................................$120

Powder coating all 4.....................................................$140

Mounting and balancing................................................$ 140
____________
Total.........................................................................$1900

Plus shipping.

But wheels and tires play such a big part in the overall look and safety of a car that it is just part of the cost of playing the game. That is why I laughed one time when a guy at a gas station was admiring my car and he said "I feel like dropping off $10,000 and letting you build me a car ." I laughed and told him that would get the project started and that would be about it.

Don

 

4,75 bolt pattern with 15X7 & 15X8,,,, Thats GM A & some B body steel wheels. Call Steve,,,480-899-7873

 

I don't suppose there's a tech somewhere about how you make your wheels? I can imagine the gist of it, but would love to see details.... especially if changing the width is part of it.

 

Check these guys out. They have some good prices, but you've got to keep checking if you want four of the same thing.

http://www.buycheaptiresandwheels.com/

 

Damn thats nice!

 

Be careful what you ask for!! Used to be it was common practice to widen wheels and several rod magazines have had articles on doing it--- probably somewhere on here too.
This is a bit on the forbidden side of reporting but perhaps I can get away with it , I just moved from Las Vegas Nv. to Fraser Colorado , thats just outside Winter Park Colorado and at 9000 ft altitude. SO--- I was going to need SNOW tires soon , which meant new wheels as well for my 92 Accord daily driver , ( thats the no -no part ---92) but because we are talking about how expensive wheels are I am going to brag!!
I found 4 stock steel wheels to fit the car about 80 miles away ( Denver) for TWENTY BUCKS !!! Not 20 EACH --ALL FOUR ! Went and got them , they were perfect and the cheapest wheels I ever bought!

 

There was a time that we through steel wheels away because they were niot what anyone wanted as a rule. I was accostomed to giving 5 bucks for a steel wheel when i was desparate.

now they are higher than a cats back. I still rtry to run OEM wheels or used wheels for the most part but they are getting harder and harder to find at a reasonable price.

 

Do a search, there are tons of threads on it. keywords to try "widen wheels" "narrowing wheels" "wheel hoops".

 

The idea behind steel wheels is not to go buy THEM and all brand new shit.
The idea is that you can find stockers that you need and do the work yourself.
They are steel

 

There is an old saying "A fool and his money are soon parted". I have a little under $500.00 in my wheels hubcaps and trim rings incl. a spray can of Red paint. The tires are modern radials at a little under $100.00 each. Mounted them myself and balanced by a friend. When you are in the lower range of no buck -low buck you have to be carefull. This took me several months to finance.

 

Thanks Man!!

 

I bought 4 15-inch GM wheels for my '53 Chevy. THREE of them turned out to be bent. So I ended up paying $60 for ONE good wheel, still had to buy two new wheels, AND had to pay for mounting and balancing TWICE on two of my wide whitewall radials. And the new wheels were only something like $50 each in my case, so I ended up paying exactly what I would have if I just bought 4 new wheels.

Two of the bent wheels looked fine until they were on the balancer. They had excess side-to-side wobble and when I drove the car it vibrated on the highway. Not a lot, but enough to annoy me (and, I'm guessing, prematurely wear my very expensive tires).

For me it was a lesson to stop trying to do everything super low buck.

 

The idea, if time weren't an issue, if size weren't an issue, if bolt pattern weren't an issue and if availability weren't an issue, would be to use whatever I have lying around. The PROBLEM is that this won't work. It's not that 15 x 7's aren't available, it's not that 4" backspacing isn't available and it's not that 5 x 4.75 bolt pattern isn't available, it's that when you combine all of the above, you may as well be looking for a 3 armed bearded lady who breathes fire and shits golden eggs.

As far as being financially frugal, I have done my part on this build...nearly everything so far is reused and rebuilt (by me personally) from an old / stock part. I wasn't able to do that on the wheels for reasons mentioned. A fool unwilling to spend money on a part that he cannot find or personally make won't soon be driving his hot rod. Wasting time doesn't figure into my project plans...

 

On my Model A pickup:

Fronts are 16"x4" 1940 Fords that I got here on the HAMB for $125 including shipping.

Rears are 16"x5" 1941 Mercury, got 'em off that auction site for $225 shipped. They still wore the pinstripes when I got them. I got these pretty reasonable I think but I searched for a long while for them.

Deluxe Champions, 525 and 750 16's were $670 shipped

Thats $1020 before you count my time and materials blasting and painting them and before any caps or trim rings.

 

Mine came with the car and I've done nothing but take them off and put them on the car. I guess they were part of the price I paid for the car but I'm sure it wash't $1000 of the total price for the car. Its good that I like this hobby since its such a money pit.

 

wow i got 2 16x4's and 2 16x5's for $10 a piece had to buy a pile of wheels to get them but still had less than $100 in all of them

 

Nailed it!

I can not believe some of the prices I've seen on this thread. Building these cars is suppose to be fun, going on hunts for parts, not dropping stupid money in a catalog or on a website. I also have a hard time believing that "steel wheels are hard to find" your just not looking hard enough.

 

Yeah, that's it... 6 trips to junyards in the area, 4 months worth of looking online, in newspapers, auto parts publications, etc... THAT's not looking hard enough. I found four 15 x 7's that would have worked for $120, about 1,500 miles away...shipping was going to be about $100, and at that I was taking the chance that they wouldn't fit. Here in KALIFORNIA our junkyards were overrun by a bureaucratic government who saw fit to force them to crush the majority of their aging inventory. All we have is slim pickins. I guarantee I've done more on my truck with my own hands than 90% of the guys on this site have on their cars, including rebuilding a steering box, smoothing a firewall, retrofitting disc brakes from junkyard parts, spraying with an HVLP, rebuilding my M22, notching my frame, plumbing new brake lines, etc... I'm not one of those "sign a check" kind of guys, I bought them out of necessity. Does anyone read before going of half-cocked and posting insults anymore?

 

I've run steel wheels for more than 50 years on a wide variety of cars. Most of them have had whitewalls.

Body color wheels, stock dog dishes, rings:


Body color wheels with pinstripes, dog dishes:


White reversed wheels, Nova dog dishes, rings:


Grey reversed wheels, dog dishes, no rings:

Silver 15" Corvette rally wheels, no caps or rings:


Orange wheels, stock dog dishes, rings:


Stock black wide 5 wheels & caps, rings:


And sometimes, orange wheels with full hub caps:

 

First off, I avoid catalog stuff at all costs if I can. It's a last resort. As far as hunting for parts, I am at the flea market every weekend (my $30 Speed Gems trans adapter) and swapmeets whenever I can. I search craigslist every day (my banjo, my front and rear radius rods) and I keep my ear to the ground locally. I also shop here on the HAMB and sometimes Ebay where my 16x5's came from. I searched for these wheels for over a year. If you have ever looked for a set, they are not easy to find. Sure, I could have just thrown on the first wheels that fit but thats not what I wanted. Tires, well, If you want Firestone bias plys, they cost what they cost. I could get a set of Korean radials at the local tire store for $200 but they will look like shit. For instance, If you're building a pre war car like my brother. If you want a pre war wieand tall intake for your flathead, do you wait 5-6 years until you stumble across one for $50 (which will probably never happen) or, if you have the cash, do you buy one for $600+ when it comes along? I guess if you are just building a car with no plan (and I'm not saying you are) grabbing the first thing that comes along and using it is ok. If you have something more detailed in the works, something strict period perfect, well that shit costs money.



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