Doing some thinking about wheels for my ride, and had a few questions. Were they pretty common wheel size, what year Ford/GM did they come from, can I get a crusty set for a decent price, are there other similar looking wheels with the same bolt pattern. These are going on my 47 Ford and I'll be using the speedway discbrake kit up front.
Not sure what you are asking but 5 on 4 1/2 are common Ford wheels. 1950s-60s Chevy (GM) is 5 on 4 3/4 bolt circle.
Studebaker and mopar had the 4.5 as well The deep dish mopar steel wheels from the 70s early 80s look cool.
If you were a bit more specific about what you're looking for, maybe we could provide better answers. If you are looking for 4.5" bolt circle, please go to your original post, click on "tools", and edit the thread title, to not include the word GM. Because you won't find them on GM cars, only Fords and Mopars and a few other smaller brands. but it would help to know how wide of wheels you're looking for, and the fact that they need to fit disc brakes means they need to be a newer design than was used in the 1940s-mid 60s or so.
It sounds like you're on a budget but you perhaps want a certain look? I would go at it another way and look at lots of photos of similar vehicles and pick a winner. Google search "steel wheels on hot rods/customs" and other spin-offs word groups, etc., to get pages of photos. You can often find captions and details with the photos that explain what you're looking at. You look at enough pictures and you will begin to recognize the common patterns of the sizes that interest you personally.
Sorry about that I was doing some searching and some sites selling them had them labeled Ford/GM....so I assumed. Yep defiantly on a budget . There's an old abandoned house down the road from me and that has a pile of old tires and wheels that I wanted to check out.
That's a no brainer. Grab a few and if they turn out to be the wrong bolt pattern or whatever, somebody will want them maybe for a couple of bucks or a trade.
If they're labeled Ford/GM, they will have two sets of lug bolt holes in them. Good wheels for a spare if you have say Chevy pattern up front and Ford pattern on rear, like if you put a 9" Ford rear under a Chevelle or Malibu.
yeah, some folks don't realize that the dual bolt pattern wheels are a modern invention by the wheel companies, so they won't have to stock as many different wheels. They were never used by the car makers that I know of, back when the old cars were new.
IME the problem is finding the right size with the 5 x 4.5 bolt pattern. Most common is 14" diameter. You'll need to be sure that will clear the calipers on your front end. I looked for 15" wheels for a long time, finally gave up. You can find them new, but finding original 15" wheels with 5x4.5 pattern is tough. If that source you know of has any, at a decent price, grab them.
70s and early 80s mopars 4.5 bp and will clear a rotor mid 80s -90s crown vic, marquis, lincoln town car
Ranger didn't get 15" until around 98 or 99 I think. My 94 is 14", got a wrecked 99 that is 15". Ugly wheels on that 99 though. Anthony is right on target with 80's Crown Vics, a lot of them had steel wheels and full covers, 90's had a lot of styled steel and aluminum wheels.
That's on a 2wd, the 4x4's were 15's in the '80s. Then when the 2wd went to 15's the 4x4's went to 16's. Run a full wheel cover and nobody will know. Looking for wheels from the early 60's tends to be an issue if you want to run radials as a lot of wheels were relatively narrow, 4.5", 5", 5.5" so you have to look for 195 or 205 series tires which also limits your options.
Yes, if you find one with steel wheels, most I found were all alloy wheels. I'm not sure if they are 14" or 15" though. But the bolt pattern is correct.
I've got Mopar 5x4.5 bolt pattern on my coupster. 15x7 rear, 15x5.5 front. They use a smaller dog dish than GM/Ford. AMC also used 5x4.5.
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