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Re: Wire Wheels

To: vintage-race@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Wire Wheels
From: Clark Smith <clark@dnf.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:18:52 -0700
 They tighten back at the top,
>or counter the direction of rotation.
>


I'm sorry, but I'm a little dense....  I have a very rare set of wheels on
my Porsche Speedster (Rudge Knockoffs) and I've never been in a position to
discuss this stuff with people who use to knock offs and actually drive
their cars.

1.  Everyone agrees that the spinners go on counter to the direction of
rotation, but how do the spinners tighten under braking?  It was
demonstrated that the wheel slows at a higher rate than the spinner, but in
my estimation that means the spinner is loosening (top of spinner moving
toward front of car).  What am I missing?

2.  And this is pretty important to me...  I put my spinners on with a huge
aluminum wrench that a machinist and I created to prevent me from having to
wack near the paintwork.  We estimated, with the pipe I carry around with
me, that we were putting these things on at about 225 foot pounds.  These
are old and rare wheels with very coarse threads on the splines and,
undoubtedly some wear between the  irreplacable wheel and the hub spline.
Each wheel has been matched to a hub and I never interchange them (we used
Hi Spot to find out which fit which wheel best).

Every once in awhile, my driver's side rear gives me a little "klunk" as it
takes up spline space between the backing up and going forward.  *As soon
as I possibly can* I pull out the wrench and tighten a little.  I have
attributed the this to wear between the mating surfaces of the wheel and
hub along with likely wear in the spines.

When we first discovered this problem, we cad plated (machinist's
recomendation) the inside splines of each wheel to take up slop.  When you
put the wheels on, there seems to be fairly little movement between the
wheel and spline, but there is some.

Assuming there isn't any possibility of replacing any of these parts,

1....can any of you estimate how much play in the splines is too much?

2....has anyone ever used a spacer between the mating surfaces that might
better conform to irregularities?  (I remember the High Spot indicated the
wheels' inner surface touched the spline surface in dots here and there,
but that was 10 years ago.)

3....if wear in the splines is the problem, is there any way to take up the
space and tighten the tolerance?

How do guys running prewar cars with irreplaceable parts fix such problems?

Sorry for all these questions, but this is something that's been worrying
me for some time.

Thanks,

Clark

"Hay Bales and Asphalt"
a video featuring vintage footage
of motor racing from 1957 to 1961.
Images and description at
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My 1953 Devin-Porsche Restoration project
http://www.dnf.com/devin-porsche.html



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