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Old 02-23-2021, 02:41 AM
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73LeMans 73LeMans is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Berkley, MA
Posts: 873
Default I'll "spare" no detail on these wheels and tires!

Tires came in early! They arrived last Saturday in the middle of the stud replacement.



Considering Summit treated each tire as an individual sale for some reason, I was ready for at least one to be so out of date, it wouldn't be worth using. I got separate emails and separate delivery dates even, but believe it or not, both look to be in excellent condition. Both are born the same week (5th of 2021) and both weigh in about the same, where the slight difference might actually be the shipping label and stickers on them. I'm a proud Papa!! Well done Mr. Thompson. (I think hes talking to you)





But lets not get ahead of ourselves. Instead, lets get in the Wayback machine and"roll" back to the wheel arrival.


This is definitely coming on vacation. I'm on hold with the travel agency as we speak.





This is per wheel, as its a DBL rim -


The only drawback were these buggers.



All coated for corrosion but apparently they were allowed to become friends a bit too early. As is good practice (and this sealed the deal), I decided I'd run a die down each of these bolts by hand....all 80 of them...to make sure they don't cross thread and ruin the Aruba trip I just booked.

Small army coming together here -



Best 2 hours of my life getting the whole platoon done. NOT. I think I now know why they call it a die.



Nice thing about soft sidewall tires is you need no machine to mount them. A bit of soap and water, some muscle and BLAMO, you got yourself a mounted tire. Good thing my wife was around for the muscle.

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Tip#18 - Don't get so excited about new wheels and tires that you forget to pay attention to the tire rotation before mounting the tire. They are not the same from side to side and removing a tire is harder than mounting one.....so I'm told.)
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BTW - even though Summit only has one valve stem listing for the Weld beadlock wheel, and just because the description clearly says "Fit Weld Beadlock Wheels Only"....



...doesn't really mean they'll fit your Weld wheels. Ask me how I know. And why are there 5 to a friggin package? Where is that O'Reillys???

Still not deprived of courage or confidence and not disheartened in the least, (undiscouraged you could say) I was determined to forge ahead. (a little wheel joke there for ya).

Assembling these wheels is....ahem.. interesting, to say the least. Here is what is written for proper assembly.

1. Begin tightening each bolt with a speed wrench in a crisscross pattern until they are fingertip tight.
2. Continue tightening with the speed wrench in a crisscross pattern until each bolt is hand tight.
3. Torque each bolt in the crisscross pattern to 50 in-lb
4. then 100 in-lb
5. then 150 in-lb
6. Begin torquing each bolt in a clockwise or counterclockwise pattern to 175 in-lb
7. Then to a final torque of 221 in-lb (18 ft-lb)


That's 40 bolts visited 7x per wheel. Allow me to do the math for ya........give me a minute.....carry the 9......minus 27.6..... bear with me..... divide by a factor of Pi.....times the radius.... That's 280 visits to a bolt head for one wheel. 560 if you are doing both in the same weekend, which I now do not recommend. Please understand, power tools and me don't normally get along. I screw up things with less speed when I use hand tools, so its with those I stick, especially for something as soft as aluminum.


Does anyone else balance their drag wheels? With the old Prostars and M/T radial, each wheel took a ton of weight - about 6oz -



I was hoping these new units would be somewhat better than that. They aren't. They took the same amount - 6oz. Well, at least one of them did. The other wheel just showed a straight line on my friends Hunter 700 System balancer. Neither one of us knows what it means. I'd love to believe it was perfectly balanced combo, but the machine would have returned a rdy indicator, so we know THAT didn't happen. (one can dream!) We even threw the "good wheel" back on and the machine sure as heck came back normally. There are no runout dots on these wheels or tires, so I'm at a loss.

The advice? Take it apart, rotate the wheel 180 degrees, put it back together and come back. 40 bolts....undone, then redone 7x. Fun times!!!

Well, at least we can see what they look like on the car, right?



I'm sure it wont be noticed here, but I can see how much more inboard this wheel sits compared to the ProStar. Amazing how much difference 1/2" of backspacing can make.




You think they'll rub?







A bit tight, Id say. Passenger side hits the exhaust - (ignore the sock)



As mentioned previously, a disk brake setup tends to push wheels out a bit...maybe 1/8", maybe a tad more. If I don't pull the trigger on that, some wheel spacers will be in order. Not for the exhaust, but for the frame. Anyone happen know how much growth an M/T Radial R will see during a run? I cant imagine much being a radial.

Guess you know what my search history will look like for the next week.

__________________
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Mark S
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Who needs nice and pretty, when you can have mean and nasty?
KRE Aluminum headed 463CID 73 LeMans. Used to run 10.6x @ 124.55. 3700lbs
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So much for 2020...shootin for 9s in 2021...and in 2022 apparently.....looks like 2023 as well.
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