RUMCars Forum
General Category => Unusual Microcar Discussion => Topic started by: steven mandell on May 07, 2016, 10:51:43 AM
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Attention owners of Nobels, Bonds, and any other vehicle where having a full set of wheels including a spare has become problematic due to attrition through rust and road hazards and dwindling sources of resupply.
Do not throw out that old disgusting bent, or more likely rusted remnant of a wheel no matter how tempted.
For I have just proven that even the most rust damaged wheel that I have ever seen, none the less had the misfortune to own, can become a valuable donor source for saving the life of another terminally impaired wheel.
I have seen less advanced forms of this damage previously when a car had been allowed to sit many years outdoors on soft earth that gradually gave way during rainier seasons, thus allowing one edge of the wheel to remain submerged in hydrated soils for the ensuing duration.
There was so little left of the original tubeless type rim that came with one of my Seab Flippers, that a tube needed to be installed just to be able to hold enough air to be able to roll it for transport. I was quite frankly amazed that the tube stood up to this abuse, as you can clearly see the sharp edges of what is left of the rusty rim being forced in an apparently piercing manner by the weight of the vehicle into the tube's balloon like wall.
Yes that is the tube, not the tire that you see bearing the weight of the vehicle in the picture.
Good thing that it only need support approx 100 lbs, or it would have popped upon first trial.
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Was there supposed to be a pic with that, Steven?
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gosh - I was hoping that we was going to get a count down on how to weld/bodge a bent/rusty wheel then getting it looking like new !
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Lost a full night's sleep getting this pic posted.
Damn Google phone got unrequested dysfunctional automatic update.
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Flipper heck, its a bulging boil ballooning.
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I wonder if the wheels could be moulded in carbonfibre. Good enough for Koenigsegg, won't go rusty and reduces unsprung weight.
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Wordless workshop.
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I am speechless :o ;D
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Be not spliceless
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;)
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???
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8)
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good job so far , and if its a one off wheel specific to that vehicle its worth saving .
I don't think we would get away with it in the UK (for road use), I'm thinking back to the widened welded wheels from the 1970/80's vintage , that caused government tighter regulations on MOT testing .
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Is that what the called reverse rims? OK when the factory did it, like Mini, but a bit dubious on the back street corner.
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That's how I would fix it , good job , wheel widening ( banding ) is big in vw and hot rod seen and if done on the right machinery is perfectly safe , talking from experience
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Neatly done!
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Thank-you.
I did spend an extra day getting the puzzle pieces to fit together within a couple of hair's widths before welding.
Could have saved many hours by having a horizontal band saw make guillotine like initial conservative cuts.
If I had brought it somewhere to have this done, much of my fretting with probably more than a thousand visual checks between tweaks with a grinder, then files, and finally sandpaper, should likely be replaced by simply machining of the pieces by holding up to my 12" sanding disk, until the outer edges of the fill in piece matched the width of the cut off flat of the recipient wheel .
The heavy duty, small footplate mini C clamps were also very necessary to be able to pinch the 2 pieces together at a diagonal pulling vector essential to keeping the parts both stable and correctly aligned for marking the cut of the minor piece that would be otherwise quite tricky to achieve.
Similarly, having a welding magnet placed on the major piece, as close as possible to the minor piece allowed, its magnetism to spread through the major wheel section, and thus pull the minor piece exactly at its edge.
I had to combine the directional pull of gravity with this magnetically induced vector, as the total of the forces were just barely up to the task of achieving the ultimately critical pre weld alignment.
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Mate your only welding to bits of metal together just use these clamps next time might save you a whole load of typing
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Thanks for the tip.
Haven't seen one those before.
What are they called, and where are they sold?
Nothing else shown in picture for me to judge scale of size from.
Have you tried clamping the radiused double curvature of an 8" or smaller wheel to itself with one of these yet?
If so, does it work better / easier than a welding magnet for this purpose? Difficult for me to assess usefulness without having a set to do some hands on with.
Here is how the welded side ended looking at the end of a partial day 3 spent priming , sanding and painting.
Haven't yet discussed or shown the other side of the story. That is the other face of the wheel that was well rusted, but not yet missing in action, and therefore judged not to be requiring a transplant.
But that's another (uglier) story for another day.😂
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buyer beware ! , that is if said car ever comes on the market , Joe Soap happily tooting down the road in his 'new' pride and joy - next thing the wheel come's off !!!
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gosh - I was hoping that we was going to get a count down on how to weld/bodge a bent/rusty wheel then getting it looking like new !
Happy to disappoint your hope to see a bodge.
I wouldn't suggest this type of repair to anyone incapable of doing quality work.
BTW, - How do you propose that repairing a perimeter section of a wheel could make the whole wheel fall off? ::)
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As long as there was a small gap between metals left before welding , so when the welds are cleaned up its one solid lump again rather than weld on top of two bits of metal then grind weld off (no weld left just looks pretty) but you will find out soon as it's got decent psi in it and it will look like abit of a wobble , it won't fall off though , good effort to the man that that gives something ago
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BTW, - How do you propose that repairing a perimeter section of a wheel could make the whole wheel fall off? ::)
that was a figure of speech , how many times do they say '' the engine's blown up'' , and its still in the car in one piece .
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Thanks Steve.
I did remember your pointer about leaving a small gap, or alternatively beveling the edges of the parts to be welded to promote full penetration of the weld from a college class in welding that I took many decades ago.
However my desire not to weld in a wobble inducing twist or out of round change in diameter, combined with the original thinness of the wheel parts allowed me to try welding from the inside first without these edge treatments.
I was fully prepared to have go back over the welds from the front face of the wheel afterwards.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that in the unavoidable small gaps that remained prior to my first pass, I could clearly see that the weld had fully penetrated to within a couple of hair's width of the original front face of the wheel, if not overflowed it by about the same amount. This is discernable in the shiny area of the picture that I previously posted. The deviation was so slight as to allow the void to be filled by just a couple of coats of primer, with sanding betwixt the spray sessions .
So that fact, plus the generous bead that now lays on top of the inside surface of the wheel, should make for a strength factor at least on par with its original.
In addition, I laid in some brazing in the lower sections of the bead, as well as along its edges, so as to both avoid areas of stress concentration, as well as make fitment of a tube, without creating any points of undue friction possible.
If you paid close attention you would see that the donor wheel was a split rim that requires a tube, whereas the recipient wheel is a tubeless type. Having my choice of either configuration, I will give it a try without a tube first.
BTW,- I did do a common sence stress test. I beat the wheel with a wooden 2 x 4 about as hard as I could expect a wheel to withstand without worry of bending an original all along its perimeter. No deflections noted.
I also tried this with a metal hammer to the point of being just shy of denting or bending it.
I got a nice even ring tone all round.
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Mate your only welding to bits of metal together just use these clamps next time might save you a whole load of typing
Try this link Steven
http://www.amazon.com/Sealey-Butt-Welding-Clamp-Set/dp/B00K1UOJNI/179-0924395-1504260?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
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Description simply reads 1.4" x 5.5" x 9.1"- yet none of these dimensions look to be attributable on the basis of their proportion when compared to the photograph.
No clarification of method of action, comments or questions answered regarding its use.
I'm afraid that I am still in the dark about this item. ???
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I commented recently on a different topic , logbooks , thank yous go a long way I find . If someone has gone to the trouble to look up a link , or in my case look up all my old logbooks , then I do feel the least I would expect would be a word of thanks . On this point I do hope to have not failed 😉
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I am going nuts. Why did I read that as log tables. No wonder I had to go back and start again. But then I did not know Weddall Seals had buttocks weighing exactly 9.9 ounces.
Announcer 'Its all very confusing. Hurrumph'! - After the Goons Show.
Having not helped at all, it must be time to go.
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I will get a picture of mine in use, I thought they look quite self explanatory
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Description simply reads 1.4" x 5.5" x 9.1"- yet none of these dimensions look to be attributable on the basis of their proportion when compared to the photograph.
No clarification of method of action, comments or questions answered regarding its use.
I'm afraid that I am still in the dark about this item. ???
I did forget how useless Amazon are on most things including techincal details - those are the dimensions of something, possibly the packet. Try these links from the Sealey website
http://www.sealey.co.uk/pdfs/instructions/AK6805.pdf (http://www.sealey.co.uk/pdfs/instructions/AK6805.pdf)
http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPageBuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&method=mViewProduct&productid=17111&productdescription=&category=17&catgroup=263&catmicrogroup=1118&analysiscode=&requiredresults=16 (http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPageBuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&method=mViewProduct&productid=17111&productdescription=&category=17&catgroup=263&catmicrogroup=1118&analysiscode=&requiredresults=16)
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Ah, the light dawns on the un imaginative. I see how it works now. A nice aid, but as with most tools, there will always be a task beyond its scope, like a complex curve. Its ever the engineers task to adapt and problem solve. But a basic quality of tooling is always a better place to start from. Allowing a top quality solution in a shorter time. Its great that there is a spread of skill bases across the contributors. I learn much from these seemingly unimportant topics, to me. It would be easy not to click on it, and remain ignorant.
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Unless proven otherwise, I will have to agree with Al.
The small hemispherical footprint of my heavily framed mini C clamps's threaded rod was needed to apply a clamping force at just the right angle along the overlapping complex curves of my recipient and donor wheel's sections to allow a tracing of the portion to be cut off the donor wheel.
This clamping force needed to be applied within a small range of suitable angularity to create a delicate balance between a radial and perpendicular to the disk of the wheel component, and therefore had to be applied to the inner radius of the recipient wheel's outer bead flange by the aforementioned hemispherical tipped threaded rod of the C clamps. This was so because it was necessary for them to seat inside the similarly angled radius of the recipient wheel's outer bead seat flange.
I know that this sounds incredibly complex, :'( but it would become immediately apparent if the task were attempted.
Alternatively some very strong magnets might prove successful in accomplishing the same task. :)
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Absolutely convinced that all of the above would render your insurance absolutely null and void in the UK and therefore illegal on the road . If you doubt that try phoning them and telling them what you've done 🙂 #just saying
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Is that not being negative? If you have a wheel missing, fixing it seems to be an option, just so you can move the damned thing round the shed, or showground. Given a collection such as has been gathered here I would be inclined to assemble, or spend out on, one set of really good wheels and then move them between the cars I might want to drive on the road. A bit like having three racing cars and one £25k tuned engine. It resolves cost control, competitive edge - in this case insurance requirements, and you still have the satisfaction of proving that you can do a rather tricky repair.
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My comment not begative at all . If was VERY positive 😀 Ok whose going to be first to phone their insurance company and tell them you make your own road wheels 🙂
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I agree to a certain extent but my peel passed the msva and I made all of that because I can weld , a weld can be bodged up to look good but weak as tin foil an msva man or who ever won't really be able to tell a bad weld until it brakes , If a part broke and caused an accident the builder would be blamed and strung up , the insurance would be void
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My comment not begative at all . If was VERY positive 😀 Ok whose going to be first to phone their insurance company and tell them you make your own road wheels 🙂
don't worry , with all the left over bits a space saver spare can be made .
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I also hear what you're saying Richard, but it would come down to whether the insurance company defined this as a modification or as a repair. Unless as Steve says it's a really bad weld, significant modifications without approval are what the assessors will pick up on. Anyway, given that a huge proportion of the complaints about car insurers is about the quality of the repairs carried out by the insurer's repairers, they're hardly fit people to judge the quality of your workmanship! As my brother always used to tell me when he sold car insurance, the only way you will ever know if your insurance is any good is when you have to make a claim. Let's hope everyone on here keeps on avoiding that.
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Thank goodness that here in the wild west of the US, we don't have quite as much meddling by the government or insurance companies.
My wheel only has to answer to my own standard, and the wheel rung true , (both literally and figuratively) when I beat it within a modicum of denting it all round. :)
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I think Malcolm's right: we need to report to the insurance company any significant modification, but not usually any repair to original pattern. We don't, for example, need to report if a section of sill is cut out and a new (equivalent) section is welded in. I didn't (still don't) think of reporting that the front suspension frames on my Mk A Bond had shattered, and subsequently been welded back whole. I reckon the crucial factor is whether the repair is up to strength, and how we determine that.
I'd feel confident (anyway) in following that logic ... and if necessary explaining it in court!