I took my pitted and slightly rusted chrome wheels to the powder coater and he called back today with some bad news. Three of four behaved well in chrome etching but one did not. It looks buggered. The shop says it may have had two coats and the inside coat started to peel in many places and we can't get that coat off to get down to bare steel so new wheels may be in order. I need to check my offset numbers please.
The damaged wheel is a rear wheel which measures 8" across outside to outside. One half of that is 4" and if I measure from the outer surface on the back side of the wheel to the bolt mounting flange we get 6" so I think that would be a 2" or 50 mm positive offset. And that would leave 2" from the outside of the mount flange to the outside of the wheel. Right ? For sake of simplicity I've ignored the thickness of the mount flange here and below.
I see that Carey has some very nice wheels already powder coated in the correct silver ( aluminum ) colour with a four bolt pattern but with the preferred 10 hole pattern which is period correct too. His rims are called 5 1/5" so they will measure 6 1/2" wide and therefore the center will be 3 1/4" inward. Careys wheels have a 25mm or 1" positive offset. Therefore if one measures from the back side of the wheel to the mount flange we'd get 4 1/4" on that one. If the overall wheel is 6 1/2" wide, we'd have 2 1/4" from the mount flange to the outside of the wheel near the fender.
In a nutshell, Careys wheel would stick the tire out towards the fender about 1/4" more than Henry's wheel and I've just got room for that. I don't know if Henry carries spare wheels in stock and if he does, I don't think they'll be the 10 hole type but I'll find out tomorrow.
Could you please check my math and logic above and confirm if I'm on the right track? Thanks.
Tom Blankenship....I think you mentioned a little while back that you bought four of these wheels from Carey. If you read this, any chance you could post a pic and let me know close your tires are to the fender ? Thanks.
My car is IRS but I don't know if it is some custom width or not.