Hi Folks, This is Tony, a new guy here, and I've got a situation here that is new to me, but I have a feeling that some of you have seen before, so I'm looking for some feedback.
Just recently upon having purchased some fresh tires that I've needed for years for my 1 1/2 ton military panel I took my old rims and tires to my local shop here to have my new tires installed. I've done a lot of business with this shop and the owner had indicated that he had some experience with multipiece wheels in a previous discussion and to bring em in when I was ready. Well, upon disassembly of the rims, they balked because of an apparent quite rusty condition. Looking at them first hand I had to reluctantly agree. So I pick up all my parts and brought them back home thinking "what am I going to do now"?. I figure all of these rims are quite specific to these trucks and while there are lots of these (relatively speaking) old rigs around, they all have had old tires on them for years and they'll all be rusty inside.
Well, I figured I should just clean them up and see what I've got. What I've found, it appears to me, is that while there was a fair amount of, shall we say, bone loss, most of the loss was between the flanges, and particularly on the side closest to the integral flange. The area of lockring "contact" seemed to have maintained it's integrity pretty well. I figure it was the tightly maintained contact all of these years. Plus the metal there ( the lockring itself and the mating flange on the rim ) is beefy. Even across the inner face of the rim to the integral flange side where most of the cancer was (is) the metal seems thick.
But that being said, one has to be very careful with these things what with the pressure involved, so proceeding to mount the tires on these rims could be problematic.
I would love some feedback on this from anyone who is interested or has some experience with these. Here are the photos of what I've got.
http://s1293.beta.photobucket.com/user/Milibolt/library/Big%20Truck%20RimsThanks so much. Tony
