Last Fall I bought some Baby Moons for my 1952 F1. These are polished stainless and very easy to dent. One of my sons installed them last week and they looked like they were on pretty tight. When we took the truck out for a drive yesterday, the first one fell off just as we left the driveway. The second one fell off a few miles further as we were traveling down a secondary highway and disappeared into the bush on the side of the road. We spent a lot of time looking for it but it seems to be a lost cause. Does anyone have some good advice on how to mount these without denting them and having them stay on? Back in the day I remember we had no problem getting these on since they were much more more robust and a couple good kicks did the trick.

 

Are they like regular hubcaps? For standard hubcaps I hammer the lip either in or out, depending on how tight/ loose the fit is, with multiple light taps all around to pull the lip in tighter or looser. I like to use the handle of rubber padded screw driver but I bet a wooden headed hammer like a lobster hammer would work well too. Or an oak dowel.

 

They look like this. I don't know if can be described as "standard"

 

Do they use the same lip to snap into, on the wheel? How do they attach to your wheel?

 

I ran a layer of black electrical tape around the outside of the flange on the hubcap and folded the excess inside the hubcap. It tightened it up nicely. Almost 15 years later, the hubcap is still tight, and the tape is still holding on.

 

Looking at my wheels I noticed that there are four places for the hub cap to hook behind. Two are fairly deep and two are shallow. I think they are original wheels. The caps just have a rolled over edge with a wire inside. The caps are 10 1/8 inch size.

 

Okay sounds like they attach the same way the original standard hubcaps attach, which is they snap in place or in other words like a spring -friction fit. So my method of tuning the hubcap just means working the metal ever so slightly to meet the part of the wheel that holds them in place . That edge is like a spring that bends out then snaps shut to hold them. Either, in, or further out by tapping the metal in either direction you can adjust them with good results. Similarly the response above which I’ve heard as well of to is to add some sort of a shim. That would not work if there are too tight.

I have used my method and every hubcap and ever wheel is different, to tune, or fit, each to the other. And I haven’t had any problems with them too loose or too tight.,

 

I designed and made some tools to make it easy to install these hubcaps without denting them and ensuring that they stay on. First I turned a bowl out of scrap wood with the same inside contour as the hubcap so that it fits inside. I made a wooden handle on the outside to hold on to. To install the cap you place the cap inside the bowl position, position in place and hit it in with a big rubber mallet moving around the outside. You need to check carefully all around to see if the hub cap it all the way in and there are no gaps between the cap and wheel. With the bowl the force of the hammer blows is distributed over a large area and there is no danger of making dents. To further ensure that the hubcap is locked in place I made this other simple tool to push the edge down to securely lock the back edge of the cap behind the protrusion. It's a little lever about a foo long. Stick the small end into the rim hole as far as it will go with the small wood extension toward the cap and push the back of the cap in by pulling the lever forward. Not a lot of force is needed since you have a lot of leverage.

I'm pretty confident that the caps will now stay on. I hope this will be helpful to others who are struggling with this problem . Many thanks to those who responded with helpful ideas.

The inside of the bowl,

The bowl fitted over the hubcap. The protrusion to hold the caps are next to the slots in the wheel so you know where to hit with the hammer.

The little lever to lock the cap in place.