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Hi all,
I'm looking for wheels for my mom's 1951 F1. Truck has been modified by the previous owner. The wheels currently on the truck have been a huge issue, we think the previous guy just kind of slapped it together(but it has some really nice parts and good money spent on the truck) and did not install everything correctly with correct parts.
I'm looking for a 20 inch wheel, without the need for spacers.
Truck sits on mustang II style front suspension and has a rear axle from a '68 cougar with drum brakes. Not sure on the length difference between the factory axle and this current cougar axle that under the truck. But The truck has at least 1.5 inch to 2 inch spacers on the rear for the rim/tires to clear the bed....one spacer decided it didn't want to hang on, on the ride home...Could have been worse. Plus the studs are not long enough for the spacers, which is also the problem. I did lock tight the spacers back on, but at the end of the day me and my dad would feel better about not having the spacers.
What do you guys/girls recommend? My mom kind of likes the torque thrust style, but I'm sure she'd be open to many different styles. Thanks for your time,
Matt
Welcome to FTE! First thing you have to figure out is why you have spacers? Are the spacers there to keep the wheel/tire from hitting the bedside? The wrong rims with the wrong O/S? Is the rear end to narrow? You need to take of the rear tires off and measure the wheel well area? Measure the face of the axle (to wheel) mounting surface to the outside of the bedside? Measure anything else your wheel or tire might his in that space? Also what size tire are you wanting to run? do this for both sides? Once your finished that you need to do the same for the front
Thank you for the reply and the welcome,
Spacers were put on the truck as the back spacing for the wheels currently on it are not correct at all. If the wheels were mounted just on the truck without the spacer, the tires would wear against the side of the bedside.
The tire size in the rear is 275/35R20 and the front's since we changed tire size, are working pretty well. The front tires are 265/30R20. But when the front tires were the same as the front, they were hitting the front fenders when almost full lock.
Looks like I got a lot of measuring to do. Thank you for the pictures as well, they look be to very helpful.
The tall 20" wheels with extremely low profile tires are certainly in style right now but you should be aware that will significantly degrade the ride and handling of your truck. That may be a trade off that is OK with you and your Mom but you should be aware of the limitations.
We had a couple of issues to deal with, and I don't know if you will have a similar challenge. We used an Explorer rear-end that is 3" narrower than the original stock rear end. We dropped the front axle, but left the width the same as originally for a bunch of obvious reasons. So, the front and rear are different widths ( we know that was going to be true going into the project). So if we were going to have the same width wheel front and back we needed spacers to line up the wheels. I'm ok with spacers - used them on race cars for a long time without issue. However, we use the spacers that bolt to the hub, with their own set of lugs to go through the wheel. No extra long lugs that way.
The other issue was that I had to learn all about wheel offsets and back spacing - Moe Craig who responded above provided a lot of helpful info. Modern wheels are usually positive offsets, and I had to get neutral offsets - easy to do with 15" wheels, but a challenge on the 17x7s that I was looking for. Finally found some without going custom and saved some $.
Welcome Matt!
You must have a pretty cool Mom if she drives a '51 F1! Feel free to share a picture of the truck.
I'm guessing you have an 8" rear. (Unless it was a factory big block Cougar and then it might be 9".) These are the type of aluminium wheel spacers that I'm running on my 8.8 and they seem very solid. These are a lot better than the spacer that just use the original/ longer studs (which sounds like you have).
Good luck in your wheel search. As dcavan001 eluded to, finding wheels in the size/ backspacing you are looking for would be significantly cheaper than having custom wheels made.
Yep - those are what I was referring to - good picture - they essentially become part of the hub, and you have normal-length lugs coming through the wheel.
These are 15"x7" front and 15"x8" rear on 8.8" Explorer Sportrac rear axle which lets you use wide 60 series radial tires. Wheels are custom in order to get the '34 Ford artillery wheel look.
Pete - love the look of that truck. Looking forward to seeing it all put together.
Me too Dave. I really like driving it in our private neighborhood but it is off Monday to finally have an exhaust system put on before the neighbors show up with the tar and feathers.
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