Details - Wheels and Tires
The cold weather of Minnesota has had me in hibernation mode for a while now, but the sun is coming out again and the temps are rising. Time to get busy on the Torino Tribute build again.
I would like to go into a few of the details of the build that hopefully will help in keeping the "new" Torino looking period correct. A few posts back I talked about using the correct wheels and tires, but that has evolved into a task in itself.
For Reference, here is a photo of Punky's original Torino from 1974.
And here is a close up of the rear wheel and tire.
I just want to point out a few things about the original tire & wheel combo. The hubs they used back then had 8 studs and lug nuts. These were truck hubs adapted to the quick change rear end in this case. The wheels were painted 8-lug steel slotted rims. The McCreary brand racing tire pictured here was pretty common back in 1974.
Well then, all I have to do is find some 5-slot steel wheels and mount McCreary racing tires on them, should be easy right?
In 1992 McCreary changed it's name to Specialty Tires of America and in 1994 changed the brand name to American Racer. So they quit producing McCreary branded tires about 25 years ago. I have also searched high and low for 5 slotted steel wheels that would bolt onto my current hubs, (the smaller Ford bolt pattern) with no luck.
A while back my wife and I made a visit to Joe's Garage in Towanda, IL. Doug Morris is the owner and gave us a tour of his Museum, Diner and collection of vintage race car parts. In passing I asked if he had any McCreary racing tires in his collection. He told me he would look around. Shortly afterwards he contacted me and said he found seven tires, and asked if I wanted them. Needless to say I now have in my possession, seven vintage dirt track tires.
Next up...wheels! I looked around and finally purchased a set of 15" X 10" Cragar V-5 steel wheels. Unfortunately the wheels were only sold in black so I scuffed them up and painted them silver to match the above photo.
So now I just have to pop the old tires onto the new wheels! Simple, right?
While checking around to get the old McCreary tires mounted, I was told that they wouldn't even allow a tire into their shop that is more than 10 years old. Alrighty then, I'll figure out how to mount them myself.
By the way, I do not intend to race the car with this set of wheels and tires, this will be the show set. My intention is to get a set of modern American Racer dirt tires and mount them on Aluminum slots. That being said, I have to find an inexpensive way to mount at least two 2 sets of tires. Most shops charge $12 to $15 dollars for each mount, so I needed to find a lower cost alternative.
I did some research online and found several manual tires changers that had a range of price points. Quite a few videos out on YouTube showed an inexpensive manual changer option from Harbor Freight. Normally I do not buy many tools from H.F. but it looked like these were pretty basic and might work out for what I needed to do.
Many of the videos showed the pros and cons of these lower-end tire changers, so I decided to upgrade the unit where I could.
Since I am not able to anchor the changer to my floor, I decided to mount it to a pallet. I added some structure to the pallet in order to keep the unit more stable.
I then welded the bottom of the tire changer to eliminate the flex of the bolted together configuration.
Next up, I fabricated a bigger and better version of the tire installation/removal tool that is included with the H.F. tire changer.
I also bought some rubber pieces, cut them to shape, then put them between the wheel and the hold-down device.
Now we are almost ready.....just need to add a jug of Bead Eze and a valve-lock tire inflator.
And here we go...
After some muscle strain, a lot of compressed air and some choice words....I have a mounted tire!
Well that wasn't too bad, now just do 3 more...
Next. up I will revisit the paint test panel I have been working on for the last year or so. Take care.
