The wheel issue is becoming serious for some of us. I have a 57 Plus four with
16" wheels and have been looking for better than two years for spare wheels for
same. Now I have two of the five wheels with the car that are cracked, and
another which is suspect. All are cracking in the same exact spot: There are
three rivets on each wheel that are designed to hold the hubcap on. Around each
rivet is a flattened section of the wheel crown, designed I suppose so the tire
changer could get a screwdriver underneath to pop off the cap, or maybe designed
to give the hub cap a better "purchase" around the rivet.. About 3/4" wide, with
the rivet in the middle.
On each of the two wheels the crack starts at the edge of this flattened
section, then propagates down to one of the ventilation holes. The third wheel
has a crack at the flattened section, but it hasn't spread yet. One crack
appeared at Pittsburgh GP after a hard Saturday run and made me scrub the car
and come home.
These old, brittle wheels on my car cannot be unique or all that unusual. Mine
is a low mileage car (24,000) which doubtless had a harder life than I imagine.
The usual vendors tell me that new wheels don't exist for these 16", ditto 15",
but used ones are around. Switching to new wires isn't really a good option for
these old cars; they look so out of place.
I've had a hell of time locating some 16" wheels, have done so, and will have
these wheels magnafluxed and trued and will pray for rain. There is a company in
Missouri (I understand, no details known) which manufactures a 130 mm bolt hole
wheel with various offsets which in practice will work on the Morgan, but I
can't imagine what these wheels look like. The minilites keep coming up in
conversation as an alternative. Knowing more about them as an alternative might
be a good idea, but somehow I see these as wheels used in the Sixties and
onwards, not on the earlier cars. I'd be curious to know if the "Steel Wheel
Problem" is one that other owners are concerned with. I'm thinking seriously of
chasing down the companies that manufactured wheels for Morgan, seeing if the
tooling is still around gathering dust, and seeing what can be done to produce
some new steel wheels.
Any thoughts from the readership would be greatly appreciated. Without wheels
it's just an inefficient bookcase or cat cradle.
Regards to all
Chip Brown
Graeme Sutherland wrote:
> + I've seen magnesium alloy wheels with centre splines (not the one
> + Morgans offer) on MGBs. Does anyone know who supplies these?
>
> These wheels may well be Minilites, which were one of the original
> aftermarket magnesium alloy wheels. They're still in production by a company
> over here, albeit in a better grade of metal than the originals, and I'll be
> able to post the address of the company if anyone is interested after the
> weekend.
>
> Graeme
|