Well, this week I'm going to dive into a set of wheels that have been kind of problematic. You
know, if you've been following along you're too long you know that I'm not doing a lot of wheels anymore,
but occasionally a set of wheels will show up that have just been kind of a problem.
So this set of wheels has already been rebuilt by somebody. Now when they came back to the
owner they were all painted with this white
kind of a white wash, not really a primer,
but he was suspicious that what's this guy trying to hide from me. Well they sat a little while and
pretty soon the joints on the felloes, they were moving and weren't lined up anymore,
tires were getting loose and the wheels were starting to move, so he gave me a call and said,
hey would you look at these wheels. Well I was in the middle of rebuilding this two-seat buggy
and I said I can't get to it right now, but when I get done I'll look at them. So he brought them
over and now I'm done with that buggy, so I'm gonna get into these wheels and kind of
see what the problem is, what's inside that's just not quite right. Well these wheels really
are quite a heavy set of wheels, they have some real heavy axles on them, and I guess they belong
to some type of a dray wagon, possibly a type of a brewery wagon, that has made been made popular
by the Clydesdale, Budweiser hitch; might be a little different box style, but it's that size
of a wagon. So let's examine these wheels a little closer and just see what we've got.
Well this first rear wheel you can see where the felloes have shifted side to side and they're
not centered on the tire anymore; just shows how loose this tire has become even as it is just set.
Well you can see where some of the felloes have been replaced and there are some old ones still
that are left as originals, but what shows up here is where the new felloes have been.
There's also been some new spokes and this the spoke tenons have been cut way too short,
they don't come out to the edge of the felloe like they should.
So even as I knocked the first felloe off you can see how short these spoke tenons are.
Now compared to this original felloe you can see
the heavy spokes and the full length spoke tenons on the original spokes.
These last two felloes, they are still locked together by a cross pin at the felloe joint. Now
if you've watched me you've seen that typically I put a spline on these joints, but this is another
approach of locking these joints together and this is what a cross pin, set in at 45 degrees.
So these felloes, that have had the short spoke tenons on them, you can see all the pressure is
on the shoulder, the spoke to the felloe, and how they compress deeply into the felloes themselves.
Now the second rear wheel you can see where they put tire bolts right through each joint.
Well if there was a case that there was any type of a spline or a cross
pin, this bolt would automatically cut that in half, so it's really pretty counter intuitive.
So to get this wheel apart I need to pull these bolts so I can get the tires off.
This tire also is pretty loose and I can just knock it off without having to cut the tire
just because they have loosened up so much.
So this wheel also has had some new spokes put in and some new felloes
but these tenons were cut full length. The problem is they were cut too small,
so as they fit into the felloe they're real sloppy.
Well after I got the tire off of this first front wheel you can see that there's a
number of new spokes put in here, and also new felloes, and the spokes aren't quite as short,
but they still don't come out to the face of the rim where it should. And you can see where
they used to have splines in them, but they all have been cut and so they're basically useless.
But for the most part all of these spoke tenons are also too short.
Well this last front wheel shows a combination of old spokes and old felloes, with a few
replacements, but they have put a lot of shims in these old spokes, and not in the center of
the spoke tendon where they should, but they've jammed them in, off of one side, just trying to
hold these together. They actually have a fair bit of rot in them and it should have been replaced.
And one thing I noticed, on one front wheel, was that the depth of the felloe was
quite a bit narrower than the depth of the felloe on the first front wheel I took
apart. You've got one just at shy two inches and the other is at two and three eighths.
So as I got into these wheels you can see we really did open up a can of worms.
And I did talk to the owner and bottom line is, I think we're just going to use the hubs and go from
there. You can see I've got all the spokes and the felloes taken out of the hubs; I'm going to run
the hubs through the sandblaster, all the flanges, and look at these hubs a little closer also.
So while I've got these flanges all sandblasted, just to keep them from rusting,
I'm going to run them through the paint room and put some black paint on them. And
one thing that shows up pretty quickly is that these hubs are all different.
We have one hub that stands 13 and a quarter, at 12 and a half, 12 and a half, and 12 inches, so
with the different heights they're also different diameters. Now generally it's pretty common that
front and back axles would be the same, but in this case we have two different size axles. We
have one that's two and a quarter and one it is two inch, so the spindle sizes are also different
lengths; the spindle length on the back axle is 11 inches and the spindle length on the front axle
is 10 inches. So the hubs on these the center two here, as I have them lined up on the table,
are actually both 12 and a half inches, however one goes to a rear axle,
because the boxing length on it is 11 inches, and the boxing length on this other one is 10 inches,
even though the outside hub height is the same for both. So the rear axle wheels actually have
two different size hubs, but the boxing lengths are the same. The front axle wheels have two
different size hubs, but the boxings are the same ,12, 12 and a half, 12 and a half, and 13.
So we also end up having different flange sizes.
We're gonna have two different flange sizes on the back
two wheels, and on the front wheels we're also gonna have two different flange sizes,
although one hub for the back wheel and one hub for the front wheel will actually be simmer,
similar flange sizes, but the boxing lengths will be different. So you never really know
the history behind some of these wagons, what has happened through their lifetime.
It's not uncommon that they go through a wreck, and different combinations are put together
over different times, so somewhere, the back two wheels, although the boxings are the same,
the hubs were changed, the wheels were changed. Similar here. You know,
so it's very possible that these two were original and these two were not,
but it's really difficult to know that for sure. The case is, this is what we have to work with.
So I'm going to try these boxings and see how they fit on the spindles of the axles themselves.
So this is the small hub of one front wheel on the front axle,
and it really fits pretty well.
I'm going to see how the other front hub that has a 10 inch boxing in it also fits.
So this boxing doesn't fit well at all.
So I'm guessing maybe this was a transplant. It's really difficult to know,
but it doesn't fit anything like the other hub did.
So this is the smaller of the two hubs for the rear axle
and it doesn't fit too well either. You can see he's got a lot of play to it.
This doesn't fit well at all,
although the length is right, the taper does not fit well. I'll try the other one.
So this is the largest hub for the core,
and it doesn't fit well at all either.
So out of these four we have one hub that actually fits. This is the hub for the front axle.
It fits well. The second one does not, and neither one of the hubs for the rear wheels
fit well either. So with this kind of really poor fitment
you have to kind of wonder whether it's worth to go to all the expense to put wheels on these hubs
when they don't fit the axles well at all. So what we did visit about, the owner and myself, if they
don't fit well, and we have one out of four that fits nicely, now is maybe the time that we take
and we convert these axles over to roller bearing; we put roller bearing boxings in these hub
cores, and actually upgrade these wheels now. If we're going to put this kind of money into
the wheels, to fix them, we need to have them fit the axles correctly also. So that's probably
going to be the route we're going to take. This video is just to help even the owner
see for himself how these wheels are and how they fit, or how poorly they fit. So anyway, this is a
process of evaluating what we're going to do, and I guess we'll go from there. Thanks for watching!