Quote:
Originally Posted by RodKnock
I suppose finding some would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
Love TTD's! Thanks for posting, Dan.
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Finding some and finding some most people would risk driving on are more or less different subjects. Based on experiences that I know about, one might have to buy two sets (10 wheels) or more to get five wheels matched wheels** that can be cosmetically restored on the outside and don’t have safety concerns*. I have known cases where an original car owner hunted down more than two sets to build one matched set to use on a restored car. Guess where the left overs of questionable “quality” or mixed revisions go, yep back into the market. When located these things, original 1960s made wheels that is, are usually not cheap no matter what they look like.
The best wheels condition wise come out of the desert south west generally. Some areas are so dry in climate that magnesium doesn’t corrode very fast. In regions where owners long ago drove on winter salt treated roads corrosion all over inside and out can be severe. In the southeast the humidity is so high year round that magnesium wheels can corrode a little bit to extremely pitted unless maintained and protected with some kind moisture blocking external treatment. Just washing them when a car is washed can be lots of trouble, see safety concerns.
*Safety concerns, including but not necessarily limited to:
1) Magnesium, castings can fail from deep inside the metal outward so just visually looking at the outside surfaces isn’t a qualified inspection.
2) Loose bolts, either wheel design, can very quickly wallow out holes machined into the magnesium.
3) Cracks. I bought a pair of wheels that had tires installed and then removed without the wheels ever being mounted on the Cobra they were intended for long ago. They looked like new old stock wheels (one is shown in the pictures I posted) but both were damaged by the tire changing equipment and one was cracked badly with a large crack leaving a wheel machine gripper bite mark.
4) Abuse. Hitting a curb can generate quite a bit of damage. Many wheels in use now have been remachined to remove any hint of a damaged outer lip the wheels originally had. Hammer blows, knock off nut wings are rear close to spokes so it is easy to bash spokes. Sharp dents in magnesium anything is not desirable because they are places for stresses to concentrate. Modifications, yes some people have made physical changes to wheels. Some home grown modifications are scary looking at best.
5) Corrosion.
5a) What you can see in use. As mentioned before these wheels can be subject to corrosion so severe they will have craters in some to all surfaces from tiny to big enough to hold something like a marble. Every corrosion pit is a place cracks can start and bigger pits are bigger dangers. Grinding the surfaces to just cosmetically remove the signs of neglect and abuse doesn’t address any corrosion that went deeper.
5b) What you cannot see in use.
5b.1) Just any old tire mounting lubricant solution is not a good idea for magnesium wheels. Some might be okay but some can start very undesirable corrosion hidden by a tire. Special lubricant made to use with magnesium wheels is a real good idea.
5b.2) Water and anything dissolved in that water is a bad idea between inner tubes and tire beads and magnesium wheels. Many of the tires used in the 1960s were tube type tires. The stems of inner tubes have grooves in them for trapped air to escape as the inner tube is inflated inside a tire. Those vent grooves are two way paths, not only can air escape but anything around them can pass into the wheel inner tube interface. As an example, consider a set of wheels removed from a car that had been stored for decades. The car was stored in a nice dry place so the exterior of the wheels were in excellent condition lack of corrosion wise. Unfortunately when the car was being prepared for sale it was pressure washed every where the person doing the washing could get the wash wand. Apparently the person blasting the car managed to hit the vent grooves in a couple of inner tube stems. The car changed hands and went into storage again. When new owner finally decided he didn’t want magnesium wheels he had the tires and tubes removed to make shipping them to a buyer easier. Two wheels were dry inside and two wheels were soaked inside. The two dry wheels were excellent in lack of corrosion sense. The two wet wheels had severe fresh oozing corrosion by-products everywhere the water wicked to and that was in most places. Pits were so large and deep in places you could have measured them with a pocket scale. Results, two of four wheels were damaged badly by a combination of careless washing and return to storage.
6) Worn or damaged splined adapters. Adapters used on rear wheels in competition can become worn so much that little of the internal splines exist anymore. This creates concerns about potentially losing a wheel while in motion and or damaging the rear axle hub.
** Match sets. When I was trying to come up with a GOOD and MATCHED set of wheels one wheel purchase at a time I ran into a problem I had not expected and that was I discovered different versions. I found different versions of the base castings and I found variations in the way castings were machined. I wanted five 15X6 wheels that were all the same. I never completed a set. I found pairs of wheels that matched but I failed to find five that looked identical lying out on floor together. I collected wheels for decades and decided buying them one at a time wasn’t going to work for my plans. When I bought a car converted to pin drive configuration I traded off all the odd wheels and pairs of wheels that I collected.
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