1969 Dodge Dart Custom Sedan Slant Six, Father-Son Project

Wheels. Now I know why there’s a dedicated forum just for them. We ended up getting the polished versions of the wheels we waited on back-order for 9 weeks for (which had grey-painted centers). At first we thought the polished ones would be a bit too fancy for a 4-door sedan, but now that they’re on, I gotta say ...we like them a lot. 16" wheels were the choice, due to vast tire selection and not being 'too big' for a sedan (you 2-door coupe guys may be able to pull that off, though!).

The short version of the story for selecting and installing big-bolt pattern wheels is:
-Measure the room you’ve got to fit ‘em in. Carefully. Measure your stock wheels, and pay attention to backspacing.
-Realize that the advertised wheel width is NOT the actual wheel width. There’s an extra inch that sneaks into there (tire bead width versus edge of metal rim)
-Wheel adaptors are awesome and easy for the rear axles. The front disc brake kit we installed has 5x4.5 big bolt pattern studs, and we wanted four identical wheels, so the rears needed ‘converted’. We installed ¾” thick wheel adaptors from FTWadapters.com.
-If you trim the inner wheel lip for clearance like we did, grind everything smooth and radiused, then solvent clean and seal it up right to prevent future corrosion. Wheel wells are notoriously tough places to keep from rusting. Primer, buller-proof urethane, plus two layers of rubberized undercoating sealed everything up on this Dart’s inner fender lip.

There’s one finger-width of gap between the tire and the rear lip. Not much, but hopefully enough.

Photos below:

1-Stock wheels, 14x5.5 with 3.5” of backspacing, wrapped in 205/70/14 tires. 5 x 4” small bolt pattern
2- Trim about 0.6” off of the inner fender lip
3 – Cut three threads off of the stock studs to ensure they don’t protrude beyond the wheel adapter. (note: they’re still long enough to reattach the stock wheels). Ends were heated and blued with oxpho blue.
4 – Install the adapter using the stock lug nuts to mount the adapter. New studs are 12x1.5 metric. Which don't match the front, but oops happens. Let's just call it one of the car's quirks.
5 – New wheel installed, same view.
6 – Showing the finger-width gap that remains. The shadowing makes it look smaller than it really is. It is close, and hopefully good enough. Otherwise we’ll end up having the axles redrilled for BBP studs.
7- New shoes. :D

Can’t wait to see this car painted some day - soon. In fact, the wish is to have it done by early April, in time for my son to be able to drive it up to his college for the start of his Spring quarter. All that's left now is body and paint.