The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest HF wheel dolly problem.

I have a set of wheel dollies for moving the 49 around the shop. It came from Harbor Freight. The problem is that the center holes in the cast wheels are oval-shaped and I don't know if they came that way or not. It is not easy to move the truck around. They have a piece of steel tubing as a bushing between the cast wheel and the axle bolt. I would like to try to fix them by drilling the holes over-size and use new, over-size bushings. My question is, what is the best way to drill the new holes in the ovalled out holes and have them in the center. I do have a nice drill press.

Carl, if you have a good drill press it should have a vise block to hold the piece to be drilled, clamp it firmly and use a drill bit slightly larger than the widest dimension of the ovaled hole ... piece-a-cake

Bill

If you are lucky enough to be able to drill a hole the same size as the OD of wheel in a xx thick board, then: Place wheel in your vice, sticking up from vice 1/2 the thickness of wheel. Set wood piece, with hole drilled in it, down over the stick-up part of wheel. Slide both back under drill press and move around until hole saw (still in drill press after drilling wood) also fits into the hole in wood (while wood is still on wheel). Clamp down the vice, remove wood, remove hole saw bit, install bit sized as Bill says and drill out wheel. If this is not right maybe you can improve on it or it will give you a better idea. I'm thinking this centers the wheel on drill press because you are saying you don't have a center to drill to? Is that right?

I'd bore and or ream it in the lathe to fit a bronze bushing.

Same ting, Grigg. Everyone should have a little bench lathe if
they're gonna get into restoration of trucks.
Especially if you have a whole gaggle of them.....Carrrrl!
And my suggestion for those Harbor Freight wheel
dollies.....garage sale them, just my opinion of the
set I'm stuck with and the other two sets I've helped
friends move cars with.


DG

If he had a lathe, he could just make some wheels. Carl, you must be abusing the Dollies, those wheels are only seeing about 200 lbs each..... Stop abusing the Dollies. (that doesn't sound right?)

Thanks for the ideas gentlemen, and Denny. The only way I could make room for a lathe would be to sell one of my trucks, but then DG would have less ammo to pick on me about. BTW, just how many radios does a guy actually need? Any suggestions for a good drill press vise? I have needed a good one for a long time.

Harbor Freight

Might be cheaper just to find new wheels.

Clamp the wheel down on a good cross-slide table and start with a drill bit slightly larger than the current hole, running at high speed. Step-drill the hole up a little at a time until it gets round.

I'll second the motion for new wheels!
Jerry

300 Carl, you gotta have about three hundred to classify
yourself an addict.
Bart, the major problem I've found with the Harbor Freight
wheel dollies are the caster swivel part of them. They don't
swivel so they won't caster around. I have to use a 2x4 to
bump them into alignment with each other or in the direction I
want to move the truck. Once all 16 castors are lined up on
mine, I can push my 3604 into the corner with one hand. So
apparently my wheels aren't misshapen, just poorly made
caster pivots.
dg

Knowing you, you will probably weld up a fork tool, with a long handle, to rotate each wheel.

Or I could just buy a new truck and call the wrecker to haul the antiquated one away, but where's the fun in that?
Carl

Now you're just being mean!
Carl

But friendly mean..... "What was life like before we could push trucks around sideways Daddy? Was it terrible? Did people suffer a lot?"

yes son, the number of inop trucks we could have was limited to the number of doors on the garage

Bill

In high school shop class we used two floor jacks to move cars around.

That's what I do now. BTW: That Costco part Aluminum jack is awesome.

I'm still doing that with these dragsters!

Carl, he is probably being honest. I have a HF drill press vise and I use it every day. It works perfectly. I also have those dollys and made the mistake of using them on my ton and a half. So, they are just like yours now. I will get new wheels since the metal structure is just fine. Not sure about this application, but I found a really great resource in castercity.com. The cool thing about this place is, they have casters that use metal locks and the locks do two things.. they lock the wheels, but they also lock the position. I have several shop helpers with their wheels. No complaints at all. HF nor Northern Tool has casters of this quality.

Deve, if there is one thing that I am sure of, it is that bart was indeed yanking my chain. I would be disappointed if it where any other way, as I often deserve it. After reading all of the responses, my hard head has been softened and I will be shopping for high quality castors.
Thank you all.
Carl

"yanking my chain"? I'm not familiar with the term....anyway, I think you can buy a Harbor Freight franchise cheaper than 16 quality castors.

If correcting a non-centered-non-circular Hole, using a drill Press...

Sharpen the over size Drill bit to be a 'Brad Point' type, with peripheral "Ears".

That way it will not be trying to self-center into whatever it feels is the center of the improper pre-existing hole.

That's a tall order with any sort of drill bit. Best you can hope for is some improvement, be real tricky to get it dead true in the center using a drill press and a vise.

Just try my method it's easy and cheap. You should never have bought those dollies without having a drill press vice.

Thanks a lot Peachy. Do they sell yanking chains? Probably out of stock if you have been there recently.

Yep, they are on back order for me. Later Bud.