Modifying car steel rims on a lathe

GoceKU

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I've been asked to modify an space saver spare tire to fit vertically in the trunk of a sedan, there was couple of difficulties, first of which the car has big brakes so i have to use 15" rim. And there aren't any rims in the correct bolt pattern. so i did some research and come up many failed re drilled rims, after considering this is a spare tire for very limited use the strongest solution was to cut the middle of it and one from a rim with the right bolt pattern and join them, so you can see the flanges i made earlier and my setup using hand ground HSS parting tool, the charter was incredibly loud so i slow down my lathe to 16 RPM and that did the trick for the second rim i angle grind the centre in between the vent holes. Then i had to finish the second flange to accept this centre and from there i did almost the same machining except i left about 1mm edge so they can locate one in other, i'll tack weld it then check it if all alright then fully weld it both sides.
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Nice job. "watching"
-brino
 
Interesting. Keep us posted. Can you share what this is going in?

Regards,
Terry
 
It's going vertically to the side of the trunk, on a Ford Mondeo MK3, the space for the spare tire is already taken by a LPG fuel tank.
Thanks. Would love to see some follow-up photos as you proceed.

Regards,
Terry
 
This project is close to the timeline i've set for myself so is getting all my free time, that said i tack weld the rim on couple of spots then mounted it on the lathe check it it has little runout less than 1mm, then i testfit it on the car, sorry no pictures of those steps but the offset is good and is clearing the brakes with millimeters to spare, for full welding i took it to a friend's shop he recently bought an industrial pulse mig welder, so this was a good candidate to test it. He welded both sides in less than 5 minutes, he did some side to side welding to avoid distortion but i will mount it again on my lathe and check it, the weld shrunk down in the channel i cut for full penetration nicely i'll probably just hit the highest spots with a flapper disc, the good thing of welding with pulse mig is full penetration without putting extra heat so no peeling paint.
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Nice Results!
It looks like your friend has already had some practice with pulse MIG.
-brino
 
It looks like your friend has already had some practice with pulse MIG.

Yea he is a pro at welding, i just finished painting the rim with black primer, should have the tire mounted tomorrow or next day if the tire store is opened when i finish from work.
 
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