Jim, Alan, Patton, Dick, Greg, David, Tom, Jonathan and Bill and All,
Many years ago 40 - 45 to be exact I had a TR3 that I ran in Gymkanas and
Autocroses a lot.
After a few months I noticed many loose spokes and tried to tighten them up.
Used a adjustable wrench to start with then bought a spoke wrench. Wound up
breaking a number of the spokes due to rusty nipples. Borrowed some wheels and
tires and had my wheels relaced, trued and tuned. After another six months I
had to have the same thing done again. After another six months I had to have
it done again. This time I had a talk with the Wheelwright at Southwest Wheel
in Dallas that had done all the previous work. He said to "ring' the spokes
out and tighten the loose ones. And he went on to explain the art of keeping
wire wheels in tune. He suggested to "ring" the spokes every couple of weeks
in my case or every several hundred miles if not used much. I would do it
before each event and really never had any more really loose or broken spokes.
And never had to have my wheels relace again.
He emphasied that regular maintenance and tight spokes were the secret. He
said all spokes will strech and that you have to keep the spokes tight all the
way around if you don't want trouble. I had 48 spoke wheels and of course he
recommended that I go to 60 or 72 spoke wheels for the type of competition I
was doing
By "ringing" spokes use a wooden dowel about 1/2" dia. (not critical) about 8"
long and hit each spoke like you are using a tuning fork. Each tight spoke
will "ring" and each loose spoke will sound with a dud. Tighten each loose
spoke until they all sound as close to each other in "ring" tone as possible.
Rusty nipples are a bitch as I said before so keep the nipples well oiled.
Patton listed an extremely good article
http://www.team.net/sol/tech/truwire.html that talks about much of what I just
said except I would differ on the period of maintenance. I would check the
spokes at least once a month if the car is driven at all, and at the end of the
driving season if you have one. If you tinker with your car more often once a
month I would do it then, it only takes a few minutes to "ring " out all four
wheels.
My TR3 was a daily driver back then and I had a Saturday ritual where I would
wash car, clean wire wheels, "ring" spkoes, lube nipples, and check the tune of
the carbs. For competition events I would run the carbs on the rich side and
then lean them back out for regular driving. Don't know if it helped but the
idea sounded good.
Just my $.02 worth.
Jerry
BN2
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