Thanks to everyone for the excellent advice; it was very helpful. I finally muddled my way through to the promised land: new tires! For those of you who may travel down this road in the future, I'll tell you where it took me.

I had two 17 inch split rims on the back with two dry-rotted tires, one of which blew out. Based on Grigg's excellent Tech Tips article I set off looking for one-piece steel wheels that would match the spacing of the original narrow 8 lug wheels.

I spent a morning picking through the local salvage yard. I found lots of cool stuff on lots of old truck carcasses, including some really cool brush guards which I may have to go back for. Anyway I found several one-piece 17 inch wheels, a few 17.5 inchers, and even more 19.5's, all 6 inches wide and with about the right backspacing. The yard guy told me the trick would be finding tires to fit any of those old rims.

So I got on the Stovebolt links page and found my way to Denman Tires. Their website showed plenty of commercial light truck tires to fit any of those rims. I called them up for prices and they directed me to a local distributor. I'm in the Denver area and called Premier Tire. They had tires in stock to fit the salvage rims but also offered to mount up the tires on my split rims. They made it sound like no big deal.

In the end I decided to save $90 and reuse my split rims - mostly because I knew the hub caps would fit ... and well, it was 90 bucks! The down side is if I get another flat, it's not going to be easy to find someone to work on them (except now I know about Premier Tire).

So the 1 Ton is back on the road with shiny new slicks on the back and hub caps too. When the time comes for any of you to hunt for new tires, you can save some time and call Denman's for the name of their local distributor and ride brand new tall skinny tires on 50 year old wheels into the future!

Wilber

Don't read the directions, that'd be too easy.