At 01:35 PM 1/27/00 +0000, Richard Gosling wrote:
>
>John,
>
>Re-spoking wire wheels - haven't got any experience of wires myself, but
>there are words that seem wise in the Moss Spitfire catalogue. Their
>point is that wire wheels can be re-spoked, but by the time you've done
>it, shot-blasted them, stove enammelled them, and balanced them etc. you
>have spent as much money as buying new wheels.....
Having come into this thread late (I think I deleted the start) I don't
know if the wires are chrome or not. I have respoked 3 of the 5 original
Chrome Wire wheels on my Morgan. Luckily the chrome on the rims wasn't in
too bad of shape, but the spokes were history. A new set of wheels was
$250 ea if I bought 5 or more - or about $1,300! I didn't have that kind
of money laying around, so I looked into doing it myself. It cost me about
$72 or about 1/3 the price to respoke my wheels. I removed all the original
spokes, cleanded and polished the rims and hubs, then put in "new" stainless
steel spokes and chrome nibbles. The nice part about this was the price
for the spokes didn't change so I could buy the spokes for 1 wheel today,
and then another next month. I'm also in a position that I have more time
than I have money, so this seemed to be a very economical alternative.
The process of installing the new spokes and "truing" the wheels was very
time consuming, seems like it took 4 to 6 hrs per wheel. You will need a
truing jig of some sort. An old hub bolted to a piece of a bad axle works
best. My dad welded up a nice heavy stand that we put an old hub on. You
don't really need any exotic tools for the truing. Just time and patients.
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@exis.net
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 77 Spitfire
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
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