Hey all, I hope somebody can help with my wheel/hubcap issue. I've got a '51 Ford Club Coupe that used to belong to my grandfather. My dad and I have been working on it for a few years, it's been to a few events and that's all good. What's not so good is my hubcap/wheel interaction. I've got a nice pair of '58 ( I think ) Cadillac hubcaps - the kind that just push on, no fancy locking mechanism. The wheels that are currently on the car are NOT deep enough to mount the hubcaps. The Caddy caps are something like 4" deep. What is my easiest/cheapest option to run these caps? Will matching year wheels for the hubcaps (58 Cadillac) mount on my car? Can the wheels I own be "reversed" to provide the correct depth to mount my hubcaps. Should I just buy wheels from someone with the appropriate depth for the caps, and what would that depth be? HAMB has the answers, but I couldn't get the right keywords in my search. Thanks dv ps - the car is in the avatar by my name
I'd find a later model Ford steel wheel that the hubcap would fit securely on. Maybe off a mid 70's. The wheel will be wider but not super wide.
You can pretty much do whatever works on the front, but things are pretty tight in the rear. I just put a set of 225/75R15's on the back of my '51 mounted on 5.5 inch wide 55 Ford(?) wheels. The stock wheels are 5 inches wide and the extra width is all on the inside half of the wheel (i.e. they have 1/2 more backspace). This combination required me to trim about 1/4" off the wheel opening lip on the back part of the wheel well. If you check, you'll probably find that with stock 6.70X15 tires that you have only about 3/4 " clearance between the tire sidewall and wheel well. I think you can see that using 1" deeper wheels is not going to work. You can probably get this to work, but you may need custom wheels. Measure everything carefully first. Also, the rear end in my car was about 1/4" of center, so it hit only on one side with the new tires. I put it up on jackstands, loosened the U-bolts on the rear end and forced it over a bit. I then "cocked" the U-bolts the right way and tightened them to spec. This brought the rear-end back to center. It was still very close on both sides, so that's when I decided to clearance the fender lip a bit. If you are planning on running the caddy caps on the front only and skirts on the rear, you won't have any problems.
At home. I'm posting between teaching music classes. Bein' sneaky. I can snap some and post up this afternoon. dv
I had the same issue with a 54 Ford; The fix is to use Chrysler 15" wheels. Same 5 on 41/2" bolt pattern, deeper centers. 4TTRUK
If they're deep-dished caps they're probably 55-56 caps. 58s are mostly flat with a kind of dome to the center. 57s are about that same shape, but the two are completely different design. 55-56 are like 57 but deeper, if you were running '57s up front and had wide rear wheels the '56s would look better on them I think.
Alright, those are '56 Cad caps. You're gunna have a bad time getting those on, I would really recommend finding a different hubcap. You have a have a really deep wheel to fit those. '56 Cad wheels were specially made to clear these caps.
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