I have a set of wide five artillery wheels I want to use for my model a but they had some rust inside. I removed the rust and wired brushed them aggressively with a wire brush on a grinder and painted them The pits are very smooth now but will they hurt the tubes? What do you think?
Still looks crusty to me. Did you remove all the rust so you could see the bare metal? That would be the true test, to see how deep the pits are. I've never been able to get the rust out of deep pits with a wire brush. Only sandblasting or soaking in chemicals will get it out of the pits.
To answer the question asked - No, I don't think that the pitting as shown in the wheel will hurt the tubes. To answer the question not asked - without knowing the original metal thickness with certainty, there is no method to determine the metal remaining and no way to know how much of the material strength currently remains. With wheel prices starting at $110 at Summit (not spending more than 2 minutes looking) I would not roll the dice on these wheels.
They need to be sandblasted to see how bad the pitting really is. Sometimes it's not as bad as it looks, sometimes worse. If they're not too weakened with rust, they could be filled and sanded and painted smooth to get a good bead seat and avoid tube damage. Those are looking questionable.
Thanks guys! They were sandblasted and are solid. I think the pic makes them look worse than they are. The rust on the one pictured is the worst and only affects about 1/3 of the rim. The others aren't nearly this pitted. I picked up some rim flaps from Speedway but how in the heck do you mount tires and tubes with these things?????
The Jalopy Journal
