Those wheels are big news to me. It seems people have been searching for Widowmaker replacements to fit over the 14" rear drums for a long time.

I was lucky to have the smaller drums on my 52 and 16's fit no problem.

Are you running stock front drums? Your truck looks amazing!

Scott

 

Front and rear drums are stock! They only thing I'm looking for is Ford center cap with a 11 5/8" diameter. Very hard to find!

 

If anyone is looking for the original 17" split wheels let me know. I have them in great condition. I have the 17" for the rear and 16" for the front and the spare as well.

 

duplicate, oops.

 

Not that complicated my back end! We've been trying to find oem 16" wheels for years and years to fit over the 14" drums with no luck. Seems you got lucky and found the repop wheels that actually clear the drums. Any properly sized tire will work. Bookmarked for the next time. Stu

 

It's not luck. It's one year worth of research and going out to different wheel places to find it. We can all talk about it but if you really want it you have to go out and look for it.

 

Okay, fair enough, you did the search. As have others of us. Seems looking for oem wheels wasn't the answer. Stu

 

That's why I said it's a big deal. Stu and others HAVE been checking. Just happened to be OEM wheels.

I think most of us assumed if an OEM 16" isn't going to fit no 16" wheel is going to. Who knew it would be different enough to actually fit.

I know Stu and others have been on this for years. No way to check EVERY after market source. I'll bet he has test fit just about EVERY OEM wheel that they could think of. Vintage and modern.

Thanks for sharing, it is a big deal to some of us.

Scott

 

They're nice looking rims but not the old style with inside nubs that hold the old style hub caps. I don't think anyone reproduces them, at least not for the bigger trucks.

 

No they're not the 16" Innies but, an easy to find option. I would run them with Baby Moons.

Some of the F2 and F3 people look a long time for 17.5's or the 19.5's or whatever Stu found that fits. I guess stock later model OEM Ford wheels don't fit over the big rear drums but, apparently these do. VERY good to know for the bigger truck guys. I'm glad he posted this.

 

Unfortunately few of my wheel references cite hub cap mounting diameters, and none that I find show an 11 5/8", or .625", cap. The largest I find are the "wide 5" caps of the 1930s measuring 11.59".

These Wheel Vintiques repop's are a good solution, but still not perfect for guys wanting to use stock hub caps fitting the 8.844" "innie" nubs. The 17.5" (Budd 70720 or Budd 73240), or 19.5" (Budd 71410) are the ones that allow that. But there you deal with tire expense and wheel availability. The tubeless custom 17s with remounted widow maker centers available from Stockton Wheel are still the only ones to meet all the various parameters. Stu

 

Could you post a pic of the backside? I'm just curious how much clearance there is between the wheel and the drum. Nice looking truck by the way.

 

I contacted Wheel Vintiques and was told '......on the 8 lug rims we only make them in a 16’’ and the drop center is a 13.479 so the drums won’t fit in the wheels but we could do the min back space so that we could get the drums in the biggest part of the wheels'

I'm not sure that I understand how this would work. Any thoughts are welcome. Thx.

 

Ahh, you made the phone call I thought about making but didn't. Interesting, too, that I swapped private messages with another member yesterday about this that reminded me to call them.

Their explanation makes sense, and the below chart shows why. By moving the center disc mounting location rearward (into neutral or negative offset) they are able to get the drop center located further forward. It is the drop center of a wheel that restricts drum clearance. Their rim is shown to be 6.00" wide (measured between the rim lips) and has standard backspacing of 4". Backspacing calculations include the outer rim lips, generally 1/2" each side, yielding a 7" total rim width. So a 4" backspace on their standard wheel yields 1/2" of positive offset which is similar to an oem wheel. Their movement of the member's custom built set into some amount of neutral or negative offset explains the wider stance seen in his pictures. Stu

 

Great explanation. Looks like we are dealing with some tight tolerances with the Wheel Vintiques wheel. Should it be a concern?