<VV> Special wheels WAS convention pics- a favor to ask

[rbuckridge at comcast.net]

Ken, 

A great post for what really can be done and what really works. Too many times you see, "well you can't do that because" and it is nothing more than their theory or conjecture. 

Old racers & old hot rods are the guys that find out what works or does not work. 

Roy - Bayshore 
----- Original Message  ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:26:58 GMT 
From: "kenpepke at juno.com" <kenpepke at juno.com> 
Subject: Re: <VV> Special wheels WAS convention pics- a favor to ask 
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org 
Message-ID: <20100623.222658.23044.0 at webmail01.dca.untd.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" 


My partner and I did a lot of racing until he got sidelined with cancer. 
He is OK now but not up to building racers anymore.  We started in 
the figure 8 division and went on to late model stock cars.  The vast 
majority of the hubs and drums I converted from 4 1/2 bolt circle to 
4 3/4 were to enable Ford race cars to use the 8 inch wide Corvette 
wheels.  The Ford center hubs were considerably smaller than the 
center hole in the Corvette wheel.  The only wheel failures were due 
to collisions.   

Commercially made racing wheels always have oversize center holes 
so they will fit a wider variety of hubs.  Broken wheels were all but 
unheard of in the late model stock cars.  I took to moving the center 
section of the racing wheels to adjust the scrub radius.  Even these 
rewelded wheels did not break and they never had a close fit to the 
hubs. 

In steel wheels anyone can move the center section or even reverse 
it.  This would be a good way to move stock Corvair wheels farther 
out in the wheel house.  This works but makes an excessive scrub 
radius resulting in greater steering effort.  It is also possible to split 
Corvair wheels and weld in an insert to make the wheel wider.  This 
will accommodate a wider tire and can bring the scrub radius back to 
a reasonable dimension. 

There was a time when I wanted to mate a Chevrolet 292 cu in 
truck engine with a Pontiac OHC cylinder head to a Corvair transaxle 
and race it as a late model.  The track officials were not about to 
allow any rear engine cars in the field. 

Not sure I know how to include a picture of one of my race cars but, 
I will give it a try ... let me know ifit works. 
Ken P