Vintage Wheel Mounting Nuts

[Lincspeed]

I recently purchased a set of older Revolution wheels to use for my rain tires. They have been media blasted and I will be painting them, but the problem is getting them bolted on the car. They have the old style shouldered nuts with the flat washer that seats against the wheel and the nut extension reaches into the hub area of the wheel. The fit is so tight that it is nearly impossible to get them all "in their holes" with the dam washers in place.

 

Can I slightly enlarge the holes in the wheels, or machine the diameter of the nut shafts down a touch? Or is there some trick to getting these bastards together? On another set of these old style wheels I have, we can put the nuts on partially (I have long 4" wheel studs) and then wiggle the wheel out onto the nuts and tighten them down carefully - but these new set of Revolutions, this doesn't work...

 

Any help - please!

 

Clark

[esxefi]

as long as the wheels are centred on the hub register correctly I can see no harm in opening out the holes or reducing the nut shoulders.if they aren't you could have vibration problems.

[Nick Jones]

Triumph wheels (with the possible exception of the TR7) are all designed as Lug Centric and in general the wheels don't sit on the hub spigot (hell, the original rotoflex rear hub doesn't even have a central spigot), so they are reliant on the lugs/nuts to centralise.

 

When I've had similar problems in the past, it was because the nuts were damaged, with the sleeve ends, next to the drum slightly burred and spread. Cleaning up the ends made a big difference. I suppose putting a small taper on the inner end wouldn't matter provided that the washer end was left full size to do the centering. If the individual nuts are a tight fit in the wheel holes (and neither they nor the holes are burred/contaminated) then it may be that they are not correct for the wheels and a modest adjustment of either nut or hole to make them a free-moving but snug fit would be in order.

 

Nick

[toofast2race]

I have a set of revolutions and had the sleeve nuts spinning in the wheel for a good couple of minutes each with an electric drill and heaps of WD40 until they had a nice smooth and less than finger tight feel to them. As nick says - chamfer the ends of the nuts to assist starting.