You show me your gray powdered wheels and I will show you my white powdered wheels. I actually own mag wheels so it will be easy for me to show my cards. Purple k was in our high school shop for mag fires. Luckily we never needed it.
I'll never have to worry about genuine mag wheels because I can't afford 'em and am too lazy to keep 'em polished.... LOLOL...
Trying to show corrosion starting. Probably two months since I polished them. They look to have a coating of frost on 'em. It's white.
These cars of ours have always been death traps. Now after some of these posts I have to worry about throwing a cigarette away and igniting my Halibrands and perishing in a ball of white hot fire while being concerned about the tendency of magnesium wheels to be crack prone and dangerous. Aren't Covid and Murder hornets enough? Perhaps I should just shit-can this roadster and stay safe.
My ex-dragster partner polished my brand new rear Halibrands for my roadster almost 60 years ago. I got them thru Scotty's Muffler Service for about $80 each. Jim used a 1/4-inch electric drill to grind away the "golden" factory color. He said they "light off" every few moments. {Was this the granular stuff the in the 1900s (or so) that photographers used for flash pictures?) The fronts came for $50 for the pair with chrome hubs and Firestone racing wheels. Any way, they looked good for 50 years with weekly polishing with Simichrome, the only thing I found that worked. They're still around on a 32 roadster in San Diego. I guess they were a little cheaper then.
That's a fact Brian. Earlier I alluded to having some experience with a magnesium fire, not car related but every bit as scary, actually, it could be considered the perfect storm. As a young machinist (industrial), I had never cut magnesium and on this particular day I was given a "rush" job to modify thirty large magnesium shaft couplers for a mill that had an emergency shutdown on one of its lines. I had been machining steel all morning so the chip bin on my lathe was half full of not only scrap steel plus aluminum from the day before but also cutting fluid, tapping oil, etc. An experienced machinist would have known to clean the chip bin before proceeding with a magnesium job, well this did not happen in this case. After removing a large amount of ribbon like (not good) magnesium material from about ten couplers the leadman interupted me to have a look (he had never cut mag either I later found out) and to check my progress. Starting back up with a dull cutting tool I allowed the entry cut to "dwell" slightly, this friction on the thin ribbon of stock was like setting a match to a fuse and it preceeded down into the full chip bin setting it all on fire. The bucket of grease sweep next to my lathe did absolutely nothing and to make matters EXTREMELY worse the scared guy on the next machine grabbed a bucket of water and threw it on the blaze and then things got real ugly, but luckily someone from the electronics department came and put it out with a Halon extinguisher. The machine shop, front office and engineering department upstairs were evacuated and when the smoke cleared all of the bare steel jigs and fixtures nearby had taken on a rust like appearance, guess who's ass was now on fire, yep, mine. I never was asked to machine magnesium again. Related aricle here: More here plus video. http://www.chicagofirewire.com/fire...be-some-magnesium-reaction-to-the-water/#gref
DDDenny, that is an awesome lesson of life story!!!! Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Holding a match to a mag wheel wont light it off. It takes a good amount of heat or a good fire already in progress. If the mag is powder like in a fire cracker or small chips it starts much easier. Always use a sharp tool when machining and change the often. Save all the chips for the camp fire. Same with copper.
So how can I determine whether these are actually magnesium (short of lighting them on fire and throwing water on it)? I was told so, decades ago, but what is the real test? (the bathroom scale reads in pounds.)
Those are definitely aluminum not magnesium. But you can put a little vinegar on the back side in a rough cast area. If it was magnesium it would start to produce little bubbles. Mickey Thompson did not make those wheels in magnesium. Are they 14" x 6" ?
Just weighed my NOS 14 " x 6" in my basement. My 15" are in the shop so I can't weigh them. So i guess the .4 lb difference makes sense.
As I've posted on the H.A.M.B. before ... We ran a set of MAGNESIUM American Racing Equipment 5-spokes on the coupe throughout the '60s & '70s (late 1963 through 1981 to be exact) ... 15"x4" Torq-Thrust "Le Mans" on the front ... and 15"x8½" Torq-Thrusts on the rear: 1963 (Le Mans up front) 1964 (rears mounted on Bruce's slicks) Late 60's (mounted on Goodyear Blue Streaks) July 1969 (headed to Andy's Picnic) February 1973 (all polished up for the GNRS) September 1975 I still have all four wheels ... and "someday" they will find their way back on the coupe for that circa 1964 Hot Rod look!
Been running these for over two years. They were new when purchased many years ago. Had them power coated to eliminate polishing and Gibbs use. Even back then they were expensive but they scream Hot Rod.
High school auto shop we tried to repair a crack in an aluminum bellhousing with a TIG welder. Only one problem, it wasn't aluminum. Teacher rolled the welding cart outside and called the Fire dept. They tried throwing sand on it, and eventually sat back and watched it burn.
Originally bought Appliance 5-spoke aluminum wheels for my Willys. About 10 yrs ago I found a pair of 'brand new' 60s vintage Inglewood Pos-A-Traction 10x15 recap slicks that had never been mounted on ebaY for ridiculously low cost. They had different cores with different whitewalls so I figured I couldn't use them on my Mysterion clone so I got a bug to get some Halibrands to mount them on my Willys. Ran them to a couple California Hot Rod Reunions and March Meets before getting tired of polishing them and sold the mags and put the slicks on the Mysterion with Portawall whitewalls. The Halibrand frontrunners are aluminum repros.
The more bolt patterns drilled into a wheel the cheaper they become. Two or three extra patterns really effect the price.
A few years back I repaired a pair of magnesium American Torque Thrusts that some bozo had drilled and attached huge lead weights to inside and out, probably 10 holes in each wheel. No one would touch them so I did the repairs myself after researching how to weld mag. After welding, I carefully used the good old Swedish hand mill (file) to make the welds flush for subsequent polishing. I didn't want a sander throwing magnesium all over my shop. Knowing the danger of magnesium filings, I collected all the debris from my work area. A few days later, my stepson and I took the filings out to a safe area and tried to light them, they wouldn't light. We had to dump them on an already burning fire to get the reaction we expected. I was surprised how difficult it was to ignite. I am in no way debunking the safety precautions stated previously, I'm just saying that I was surprised at our experience. Obviously magnesium is a material to be used and handled carefully and with respect but I certainly don't think it's dangerous to use as a material to make wheels. Here they are on the rear of my Austin..... Magnesium all around.
The Jalopy Journal
