Not to hi-jack the thread but; I went to the junkyard and got a “test” wheel this weekend. I wanted something with more backspace to pull the wheel in closer to the body. I thought I had measured everything and I printed out the list of bolt patterns found elsewhere on the forum. Found the wheel, got it home and the dang center hole was too small.
Last year I built a utility tilt-bed trailer out of a boat trailer, and had to get new wheels to replace the funky rusty bent chrome original ones.
As someone else said in another post, I'm not only cheap, I'm frugal (I don't own an oil well, so the gas prices are getting to me), so I went to a local junkyard and pawed through about two thousand old vehicle rims until I had what I needed: a pair of 13" Chevette rims! (4 on 4 bolt pattern)
The price was right...the owner felt so sorry for me having to dig so far and for so long that he gave them to me!
Well, I got home, and had the same let-down s4son did: center holes too small.
No problem. After calling every machine shop in the county I found one guy with a weekend home shop who had a lathe who could cut the centers out. Everybody else's lathes were too small and get this--he's only three miles from me!
Oh, just to complete this perfect project, guess what he charged me? Since I'd sent him so much business before (all I knew was that he could build vehicle driveshafts--I work in an auto parts store), he did it for NOTHING! Who says there's no God?
The only trick was because of the nearness of the trailer hub to the frame, I had to mount the wheels backwards. That engineering involved actual bolts and some wheel wedges used on semi-truck wheels, but it worked. And the HUGE offset of the wheels from the hub looks pretty cool too! Painted and pinstriped them and I'm rollin'.
Only one issue to be aware of: a LOT of factory car rims are actually a double-layer design, and the two layers are perma-pressed together around the edge of that center hole. Cut the hole out, and there's a small chance the wheel will distort and pull apart while on the lathe. BUT if your machinist is prepared for that, he'll adjust the lathe speed accordingly to minimize destructive vibrations and you should be alright.
When I got my wheels back you could definitely see the two layers separately, but the lathe was run at low speed, and so nothing came apart. I've not had any trouble and it's already got a lot of miles on the trailer.
Happy trails.
