After reading through all of the history/discussion in the Big Bolt forum about replacing the early 20" 3-piece wheels with big truck wheels and adapters, impossible to find late 50's wheels with center bore adapter rings, guys buying used or taking apart the ones they have, to find they are too rusty to use, etc., etc., etc. It seemed crazy to me that this discussion has been going on for years without a better solution. In one of the threads was mentioned, a Company in Wisconsin that makes wheels for big trucks, Ag, industrial, etc. Wheels Now Inc. (
www.wheelsnowinc.com) so I measured up the wheels on my 46 2 ton, compared that to the specs Grigg has mentioned many times in this discussion and gave them a call.
Here's what I found out; they have all sizes of outer rims in stock and will be receiving a new shipment of solid center blanks in the next few weeks. With those, they can custom build a 6.75 x 22.5 wheel with a 10 on 7.25 bolt pattern, a 4.75 (or 5.25 or any other size) center bore hole, 5 or 8 hand holes to match our early trucks and they will powder coat them in any of a dozen colors for $415 each. With these you can run a modern 9x22.5 radial tire that is the basically the same size as the 8.25 x 20 bias-ply. Clearly this is not a cheap option, however, in one of the discussions it was mentioned that a set of bolt-on adapters to then run the big truck wheels was $1200 and you then still need to buy wheels, so doesn't seem that far off. I know there are other options out there that may or may not be cheaper, they certainly seem more complicated. In any case, given how many guys seem to be struggling with this problem, I wanted to share what I found out with the group.
