$225 each for 22.5" or 19.5" 5 lug BUDDS?

I would gladly pay that much for a set of (new) wheels! that's a BARGAIN. I paid that much for the rebuilt 3 piece lock ring 20" wheels I have now.

I also have 2 brand new TOYO 20" radials on the front and 4 (newly)recapped radials on the back. I have almost $2800 in the whole mess!!

It would be prohibitively expensive to replace everything unless someone wanted to buy my wheels and tires! They'd have to be local too, since the shipping wouldn't be very practical either.

I guess I should have waited!



Bob,

If you want to find more people interested in these types of wheels you might try checking the other forums that cater to old IH and Dodge trucks and maybe the ATHS to let them know too. THere is a LOT of people out there that have trucks that need 5 lug BUDD wheels.


Regards,


Rick

 

I would assume Rickson would use their standard steel wheels. You can go to their website and see what stock wheels they offer. Some of them look like standard Budd wheels;

http://www.ricksontruck.com/

 

Question and maybe playing devil's advocate - why 19.5" and not 20"? My tire guy indicated that 20's are easy to come by and cheaper than 22.5's. I'm not familiar with 19.5's but how do they differ from the old 8x20's?

 

I don't know exactly but the fractional tires are tubeless, 19.5", 22.5". The rims have a lower wall so you can pop the tire over them. I think tubeless tires have a reinforced side wall too because there is less of a lip on the rim. I'm not sure of the full details, maybe Stu can provide the answers.

 

The only 20" tires I see in the Coker catalog, or on the Universal Tire or Denman on-line sites, are bias ply tube type. To me the reason to go with 19.5" or 22.5" is to gain the ability to use modern tubeless radials. This is probably a good question for Dan Richter of Rickson. I called and left my cell number yesterday, but haven't heard back from him yet. Hopefully he's not seeing the poll responses and deciding to can the idea. Stu

 

Stu,

I think he would still have a pretty good market from the RV guys. They seem to be a little loser with their wallets than us truck guys. All you have to do is visit a few of their sites, those guys will gut a complete vintage RV and replace it with brand new update features. After they're done doing that they'll take a three month trip around the country.

 

Yeah, that's the key difference between us and the Travco types. They really use their vehicles. Their connection to their RVs probably correlates best to our guys that use their trucks as daily drivers. Remember a while back I commented to you about all the old RVs I saw sitting on our wheels at the motor home park we stayed at out west. These are the folks that really benefit from having radial tires on their rigs.

If I may add a comment about IHs. I think by rights we should be seeing a greater interest from our Ford guys than we could expect from IH guys. From what I've picked up hanging around oldihc.org, they don't seem to have the heavy exposure to the Firestone RH-5°s that we do. It sounds like IHs were set up from new with more "lock ring" style wheels (translation Goodyear products) than were our Fords. Henry's and Harry's relationship, in this regard, haunts us to this day.

 

if the f-4 doesn't sell i'll someday be interested in a set , but not in the near future as i got a LONG list of things i need and to do to the 53 . no 225 a peice isn't bad to us but have you tried to tell the wifey that for something you only use once in awhile ? big lol as i know what mine would say !!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh, yeah............forgot about the tubeless feature. That would be nice. I'd go for a new set if they're around 225 ea.

I have a set of 20" solid rings I'd let go for what I have invested.....

 

Stu,

From what I see on some of the RV sites not only do they want to replace multi-part 20" wheels, a lot of them want to swap out 17" mult-part wheels for the 19.5" wheels for better performance. I would think one those vintage RVs fully loaded would have worse speed and mileage than one of our trucks. Another thing about the RV guys is they have a better network than most of us truck guys. We might belong to a little truck club here and there and have this board but there are a lot more truck guys out there that stand alone, don't have access or knowledge to sites like this. The RV guys have jamborees, about hundred different magazines, AARP and huge camper associations and shows. Word travels pretty good through their network. News of new wheels will spread farther in that group than in the truck hobby, IMO.

Tim, and those are some nice rims you got there

Kevin, didn't you get rid of the F-4?

 

One other issue that came to my attention. My tire guy doesn't recommend running the Dodge RV 19.5" because the metal web is thinner than the wheels on a two-ton truck. He's afraid they might fail with the abuse these working trucks are subjected to.

Probably not a problem with an F4 or a parade truck, but he sure didn't like the idea for a working F6. ?? I don't have an opinion, just passing along info.

Any idea what would these new wheels be? Old wheel specs or the newer RV centers?

Bob, you're right I've got some nice rims! Since buying the 52 F6 parts truck I also have enough split ring wheels to make up a full set. So all of a sudden I've gone from not enough to extras - nice problem.

 

I agree with mtflat. RV wheels are, though plenty strong, are not the same as a real heavy duty work truck wheel. If you set a few sets of truck wheels side by side, you will notice that some are thicker than others. Most of you newer F-450 and K4500, and the new Dodge Ram 4500 have a very thick mounting face, compared to a F-350 wheels. RV wheels will work fine on a restored truck that doesn't see a working weight of 20000 lbs, but will likely fatigue around bolt holes when subjected to heavy working loads. I know that RV's are not lite, but after seeing the parts of my mom and dads motor home scattered for 300 feet in either direction of the wreck site, I can tell you that that big old rolling home you see running down the road, weighs far less you might think. A set of wheels for the medium duty work truck owners is a definite need, more than a want. My 2 cents. I say if they can be available, then that is a step forward for all of us that want to restore something more than a lite duty pick em up. Oh, and from my experience in the wrecking yards, $1500 in wheels is A LOT LESS than replacing the entire axle set up under an old Ford work truck. A recent price quote for a 2 ton Eaton rear axle, complete from hub to hub, was $1400 with a 90 day warranty. HMMMM, seems to me that those wheels are looking more cost effective, especially since that price doesn't include the dribe line work that would need to be done, or the brake work, or seals, or wheels and tires.

 

He might have a point. Budd literature says that their 19.5" centers are 5/16" thick. Their 22.5s are 3/8" thick. The old 20s came in a variety of thicknesses. In a 1972 book they show that 20x5 and 20x6 were also 5/16". That book shows 20x6.50 and 20x7s were 7/16" thick. In 1949 and 1954 books they show the narrow widths at the same 5/16", wider widths are a 3/8" thickness. So all this would matter on a F-6 being used as it's intended.

 

The last posts bring a lot of questions and information into the discussinon. It's all great.

Tim you posed a question I never really thought about. As Joe and Stu mentioned, truck rims come in a variety of thinkness. The RV rims on my F-4 are stamped out of 3/16" metal. Tim what is the thickness of the snap ring rims you have? As far as I can remember the WMs weren't made of much thicker metal but I am not sure, I don't have set handy to measure. I wonder if your tire guy is comparing the RV wheels to the WMs or to modern 2 ton truck wheels. I am sure the wheels of today are a lot beefier than the WMs. The trucks today are subject to a lot more abuse and hours than the old Fords. Sure, the old Fords were used and abused but they didn't see the high speeds and distances that trucks of today do.

I would assume most of our old trucks will not be subject to hard work. Most will have a pretty paint job sprayed on them and stored in a nice dry garage, only to be taken out for the occational parade, show or Sunday drive. The RV type wheel will be more than adequate for this use. Also, if the only thing holding you up from getting your truck on the road I would think you would grab whatever safe wheel option you can find. If it limits your hauling compacity at least you have it on the road and can enjoy it.

If you're going to really haul a load on an every day basis then I would be concerned about using RV wheels but my thought about the old Fords we have is this; if you need a truck to do heavy work on a daily basis buy a more modern truck to do the work and leave these old dinasaurs in the garage. There has been 50 years since they were build and in that 50 years there have been better and stronger trucks engineered. You can buy a 20 year old truck for about the same cost as one of the old trucks and they way out perform our old trucks. The old trucks are way too slow for today's traffic and will only be a nuisance on the road to the other guys trying to haul a load. Also, they have most likely been used hard in the last 50 years and the metal used in them can only be used for so long before every thing starts to go, piece by piece.

I once heard Lee Iacocca being interviewed by a TV reporter about the fire danger of the early Mustangs and what he thought of the hobbyists restoring them, his answer was something like, "It's an old car, it should have been used and then taken to a junkyard." That's what our trucks were designed to do, be used X years and then junked. I am sure no one on the line at Ford 50 years ago thought there would be a group of nuts spending ten times more money on these rust buckets than they cost new. Heck, I have an original 90 day warantee that I found in one of my trucks.

 

Bob - Please measure your wheels again. Yours are Budd #72070, am I right? The books says they should be 5/16". Where did you measure? The 5/16" is the wheel center's thickness, not the rim thickness.

The measurement that I posted above for 20s is for the widow makers. Stu