Well It's about 11:30 and I just got in from the shed and feeling fairly happy with my efforts.
The courier turned up at my work with my wheels today at about 4:15!! I imediately un packed them out of their boxes whilst my work coleagues gave me strange looks. Setting all 4 out on the floor in a rectangle shape and sitting in the middle making broom broom noises will generally be a cause for strange looks. The rims look awesome and are beautifully made.
I had thrown Garretts old rear tyres in the back of the ute this morning just in case the wheels turned up. I loaded the rims into the back of the ute and was at the tyre joint by 5:00PM. Some fast talking and a few customers in the shop saying "Would you look at the size of those!!" and I had secured a set of good second hand 245/45/17 front tyres and had the whole lot fitted for $78. Every one loves a Cobra.
6:00PM and I pick up the wife from her work and we head off home. 7:00PM arrive home, Give my little girl a big hug and then sneak out to the shed to bolt the wheels on.
Hmmm all is not well in the Murphy shed. Despite the wheels being awesome Tom has made a bit of a blunder when he built them. The bolt circle on the rear was supposed to be Ford and the bolt circle on the front was suposed to be Jag. I've got some very nice 17x11 rims with a Jag bolt circle and some 17x8 rims with a Ford bolt circle.
A quick call to Tom and he's not happy with the guy that's helping him in the shop. After a bit of discussion on what to do I decide to unbolt the centers out of the 3 piece rims and swap them front to rear. The offsets and the center to rim bolt patterns being almost identacle means I can carefully dismantle them and swap the centers over. The only problem is that the rim will now not run completely true. I can fix this or Tom can fix it when I pull these old tyres off to replace them with new ones. I've got access to a lathe that'll spin a 17" rim and I can lightly skim the mounting flange to true it up.
Time for dinner and spend some time with Lauren before she goes to bed.
9:00PM and it's back to the shed to dismantle these wheels and swap every thing around. 10:30PM and all 4 wheels are on the car, spinners tight. Now it's time to get the car down off the trolley. Some careful working back and forth with a trolly jack and some jack stands and the car is sitting on it's wheels.
The offsets are absolutely spot on. It was worth the effort of borrowing Leeroys wheels to check the clearances (Thanks again Leeroy). So after double checking, tripple checking and checking the measurements some more to be sure before placing my order then biting my nails for 4 months, I've managed to squeeze some 11" wide rims under the back of a Classic Revival with clearance to spare.
The spinners look pretty menacing hanging out there on the shallow dish wheels but it looks pretty cool to me. "Ben Hurr, Your Charriot awaits"
I'll post some pics tomorrow night, right now I'm off to bed to have Cobra dreams.
Sorry Phil, I'll have to machine your hubs tomorrow night as I've been a bit distracted
Cheers