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Stock wires on BE

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fordtrucks4ever

Jedi Trainee
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What are your thoughts to changing the disc wheels over to stock wires? I used to think they looked very cool. But the closer that decision gets, I am favoring stock discs. My plans are cutting centers out of discs and weld back to a wider wheel for slightly larger tires.
 
You'll get a lot of opinions here about wires. Mine is that I'd just as soon avoid, them, thank you very much. I had them originally on my 60s TR4A, and got rid of them as soon as I could afford to. Difficult to balance well, and I was perpetually truing them and replacing spokes. Not worth the trouble.
 
To do the change correctly you'd need to find a new rear axle housing and half shafts as the wire wheel axle was about an inch and a half narrower than the disc wheel axle. That might be difficult to find from an early MKII Sprite or MKI Midget with the quarter eliptics. That said, although the wires are a pain in the rear to maintain for some folks they look great on a Bugeye in my opinion. I've seen several and they all looked neat. Moss had one on their web page a few months ago, black with chrome wires and it was stunning. There is some history there as well, all of John Sprinzel's Sprites and other competition cars ran on wire wheels.
 

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Despite their shortcomings (balancing, truing, cleaning) They just look great. The one big knock off spinner makes pulling/replacing a wheel faster too. I've only had my Midget for 2 seasons so what do I know. Haven't tried to balance or true a wheel yet and yes, keeping them clean is pain and mine are showing rust though and all that but.......did I mention they're pretty? The things we do for a pretty face...
 
It really comes down to which you like better. I really like the stock disc wheels, so that is what I'm staying with. Wires do look good on a Bugeye, though.

You can't really go wrong, just get what you want.
 
Terry-
When Donald Healey and the BMC Competition Dept. produced a premium AN5 for racing and international rallying they fit wire wheels. Of course they didn't have to deal with the issues of long term ownership. It's your car and certainly the only opinion that really matters is yours. If you're asking about whether or not to fit wires my response would be "yes". Will it be more difficult and expensive? Yes.

Jim D
 
As a bonus feature once you have the wire wheels you can also
use Minilite type knock on wheels if your mood/tastes change.
:wink:
 
My frogeye came with wire wheels, one of the first decisions was to swap back disc wheels. They were rusty & had loose spokes so needed a lot of work. New ones are damm expensive & how good is that chrome? I want to be driving my car not spending all weekend cleaning. I've actually got midget rostyle's which I had sandblasted & powder coated plain silver. Would have gone for minilites if I could have afforded them.
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