I won't go into it now , but due to a rod shop screw up with suspension we need to change wheels and tyres. We need to change our mint original 56 merc 15" hubcaps for something similar in the 16" zone. 15" steelies won't clear the brake calipers. Pretty bummed about the whole deal really thru no fault of our own. so what is out there in the way of 16" custom caps. Any tips would be appreciated.
Kiwi , how about using 16'' beauty rims and mounting your caps to those? maybe tack welded on the back. Or perhaps get a center out of some mercs and cut into a different cap. Maybe cast some merc design centers in resin. Just ideas to get you thinking and give this a bump. Good luck
There are a few ideas ,thanks. The caps are going on our 49 shoebox so do not have to be merc but we sure did like the merc caps. It's only necessary to do this for the fronts. We do have a couple of 56 merc centre spinners. Don't really want to cut up the merc caps. Yeah I know it's a custom and the body is already chopped. Still hoping to find a traditional 16" full size cap.
70-80's GM 3/4 ton trucks used an adapter ring to use the 15 inch wheel covers on the 16 inch wheels. The rings were available over GM parts counter; they may still be available.
I was browsing parts for sale here yesterday and in the classifieds from memory "Kurt" had a very nice set of 16 inch caps that was missing the centre caps, $100 and he believes they were lyons. They could work?
Lyons are very pretty caps and were used quite a bit on early custom cars, lots of good examples, they're still around on eBay and at the swaps but good ones aren't real cheap, definitely an option though. The adapters sound interesting as well, if they'd fit.
The idea from 56premier to use 16" beauty rings would work as they do clip together but it sets the hubcap deeper in the wheel and in our offset will interfere with the centre grease cap. Such is hot rodding.
BAford falcon twin pot calipers on Trojan trailer hubs with holden stubs and xf ford falcon vented rear rotors. We had a custom tube A arm front end made, but it seems they did not own a tape measure and got the track 30mm too wide per side . In it's present configuration the 15" rims work fine but due to the wider track the narrow tyres (195) barely clear the guard on the inside on full or partial lock any load or bump and we have contact. So we need to tuck the rims in , hence the step in the rim will not clear the calipers. Presently the calipers is approx 4mm from the step in the rim.
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