I bought them all up, hoarding a set of 5! The rear pair are Ranger PU O.E.M. wheels. Fronts are Town car spares, 4" x 16". Ford's subtle, "Don't even think this is a wheel " stickers all over the spare rims. The '31 is built light as possible, w/an alloy block Ford Duratec 4-cyl. You'll want to inspect them faithfully, Esp. if considering a heavier drivetrain, or hard use.
Pitman - like those town car wheels....thet are made in Italy - so they can't be all bad...have about 4 now....found some in Crown Vics as well...
so what size (width) tires will fit on these narrow rims. can't afford coker so will have to use tires bought locally.
I agree. I think that the disclaimer saves them money in testing and qualifying for DOT specifications and license. I remember several years ago it was a common thing on this site to see cars using late model skinny spare wheels and was often suggested. I haven't heard of anyone dying (sp?) on the site because of it and we are pretty big on telling when someone croaks.
There was another recent thread on this. Hit the pic and pull yards that have late models, see what you can find in the bolt pattern you need. The newer they are, more chance of deep offsets. I remember the tbird turbo coupes being a donor for these in a 5 lug ford pattern.
this is a really old thread but the turbo coupe wheels are 4 lug and we all used them back in the day on our fox body mustangs....
Fronts are Town car spares, 4" x 16". Ford's subtle, "Don't even think this is a wheel " stickers all over the spare rims. I'd assume those wheels would be safe for the entire life of the tread on that donut spare (I'd guess a thousand miles or more) under that Town Car. Let's say the engineers really did their job, figured it down to a knat's a**, and that wheel actually is used up after a couple thousand miles in its intended use.. A Town Car / Crown Victoria / Grand Marquis from the 90's is pretty big tub of lard, close to 4000 pounds. That's a lot more strain on its wheels than the front of a 2000 pound '32 highboy. At half the strain, the you are going to get a LOT more miles out of that wheel before you need to worry about a fatigue failure .
Piper; one can look over the cast parting lines, and file round any sharp points (edges). You raise the right questions, fatigue in AL is a different kettle-of-fish. W/O an endurance limit, eventually the tail falls off a high-mileage 747.
True. For aluminum, as the cycles go up, the allowable stress keeps going down... and down. I assumed however that Ford had to design the wheels to be in the 'allowable safe' stress for at least 1 million cycles (1000 miles times 1000 revolutions per mile) at a wheel load of 1200 pounds in a Town Car, etc. If you look at a fatigue curve for aluminum, while the allowable stress is still going down as cycles goes up, if you were safe at 1 million cycles, at less than half the stress you are likely still going to be in the 'allowable safe' range at 100 million cycles, somewhere around 100 k miles. That is all I think I know. Your mileage may vary.
Ran'em for years on my T bucket front until I decided to go with Baby Moons - no hub cap bumps on spare tire wheels you know.
Not exactly the look you were going for, but I used Steel Full-Size Spare Tire Wheels from a Chevy Trailblazer on my 1950 Chevy Pickup Build. No issues whatsoever, cruised comfortably at 100mph+.
I apologize for bringing this thread back from the dead, but after scouring the junkyards for a set of these, I started looking online and just happened to stumble upon this thread. Does anyone have any lead on the Ford aluminum 16x4 wheels like Mac Miller had pictured. The biggest problem is a lot of the junk yards don't have them pictured online and don't want to be bothered with taking a pic for me.
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