I'm toying with the idea of using some stock steelies on a project... would like to make the rears have more of a dish/wider than the fronts... does any company specialize in doing such a thing?? thanks in advance
Weldcraft is in one of the western suburbs of Detroit. I've had a few done by them with great results and reasonable turnaround.
There's an independent shop in every town that can do it. Keep your money local and support the little guy.
Back in the early 60's, us "traditional Hot Rodders" cut rhem in half, put the 2 backsides together and welded them up and put the center back in where we wanted it(backspacing) We did this on the rear end of a Pontiac, with a dial indicator and a homemade tool holder for a cutoff tool. We made a lot of 8" wide wheels.
In the 50s it was common for a hotrodder to install old Ford centers into Buick wider hoops and reverse them for the deeper look. I made the rear wheels buy welding Ford centers into 7" hoops. If you are working on 15" rims then they should measure 12 5/8" inside where the 2 pieces were welded or riveted together. This is a stock 50 Mercury wheel that has been reversed by some old hotrodder years ago. The center was knocked out and put back in from the other side. The rim is no wider than stock...just reversed to get the deeper look. This can be done in an average garage. These 35 wires were professionally widened by cutting the hoop and welding in a band to make it wider. You need a big lathe and is not a home brew type project. A normal General jumbo wheel. The same wheel that was reversed back in the 50s. They look wider but they are not any wider.
I hung around a junkyard during college. The owner's son was a hot rodder. He mounted a wheel on some type of rotating gismo which I was told was originally a wheel balancer. The wheel's axis was vertical. He would then mount a cutting torch on an arm & rotated the wheel by hand as it cut away the inner flange section. When he placed the new section atop the bottom rim he used that same arm with a coat hanger as a indicator to get the piece aligned with the bottom half. Sometimes he would weld another rim cut the same way. That left a huge hump in the middle of the rim but the inner tube was happy after it was ground smooth and wrapped with electrician's tape. If that didn't make a wheel wide enough he would get a band rolled. The band welded to the rim & then the inner section attached to the band. I think he got $25/wheel to do all this back in the early 60's.
A few years back we had Stockton Wheels widen a set of steelies for our 63 Fairlane. Fair price and pretty quick service.
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