Wheels and Tires

Wheels

I'm using 15x8 1-piece pin-drive wheels from Vintage Wheels in the front and 15x10 that have been widened to 15x14.  They are absolutely stunning!!  The centers are painted Lamborghini Arancio Ishtar (orange) like the original I'm replicating.

My first set of wheels came from Jongbloed Wheels. They took almost 6 months to make and were a real disaster. They were a three piece design and the front center section stuck out by about 3/8".  This looked terrible.  Then I found that they made the centers with the wrong size hole pattern which didn't fit my pin drive adapters.  And finally, he made the rear wheels with the wrong backspacing.  Needless to say, I was unhappy (and still am).

Here are the Vintage Wheels BRM pin drive 15x8 fronts...

Fran contacted a company in Detroit that can widen wheels.  He sent them a set of 15x10 from Vintage to be widened to 15x14. Here is a shot of the widened and machined wheel...

Here are the wheels back from the polisher...

Here are the wheels freshly painted...

These are going to look AWESOME once the tires are mounted!!

And the fronts...

Tires

The tires chosen for this car are AVON historic tread racing tires from http://www.rogerkrausracing.com/.  The fronts are 9 inches wide and the rear 15 inches. 

We took the tires and rims to America's Tires in Thousand Oaks awhere a close friend of my stepson is the manager.  It took two people to mount the big tires.  The side walls are VERY stiff, making mounting them a nightmare.  It took an hour to mount and balance them.

And finally, mounted on the car...

As you can see in the picture below, the letters look a tad ratty.  I decided to spruce them up by repainting them.

I went to the hobby store and bought some gloss white enamel.  I first cleaned the tires with 409 and then started the repainting process.

And the finished product...

Closer to see the detail...