69DartDave
Well-Known Member
I was hell-bent on acquiring 16 wheels for the 1969 Dart Custom Ive been helping my son restore. In my humble opinion, sixteens are the best size : unlike 14s and 15s, the tire selection is enormous, and really, seventeens (or bigger) on a classic sedan would just look
kinda dorky. Two-door coupes can get away with the right 17s and look sharp, but for a sedan, I thought it would have that trying too hard to be cool look to it. Cmon, its a 4-door.
The tough part is that the selection of 5x4 small bolt pattern wheels is very, very limited, and all the wheels that we liked were not available in that bolt pattern. The Wilwood front disc brake retrofit kit we bought had the big bolt pattern 5x4.5 anyway, so the hard part became How To Best Convert the Rear Axle to LBP Studs. Redrill the axle flange for the BBP? Wheel adaptor/spacers?
The search feature of this forum is AWESOME, and after some historical reading on others advice, I concluded that this slant-six powered, 7 ¼ rear end Dart would be just fine with billet aluminum wheel adaptors on the rear.
A lot of careful measurements and scale drawings concluded that I could fit 7 wide wheels with no offset, and 225/55/16 tires (just about the stock 195/75/14 height), and use 3/4" thick wheel adapters, and still have about 3/8 clearance between the rear tire and the fender lip. For reference, I could not find 16" (or 17" wheels) in our price range that had the right amount of backspacing to compensate for the thickness of the adapters.
We down-selected the wheel that fit the budget and looked great (and classic enough). But after waiting 2+ months on back-order for Torq Thrust II wheels with the grey painted center, we finally gave up the waiting and ordered the same wheels in full-polish, which were in stock, albeit more expensive. The polished ones look really great, but we didnt choose them initially because they kind of fell in the trying too hard to look cool category (for a sedan). Oh well, time to cross that line. Maybe itll look okay with the new shiny paint job (B7 metallic blue) the car will get next month?
The wheels came in 2 days, and upon unpacking them I noted they looked w i d e. Then I learned that a 7 wide wheel is actually 8 wide, as the evil overlords of tire width advertising have sneakily made the standard width measurement as the tire bead width. (yes, I ignored the little Wheel 101 blurb on the web site that would have pointed this out to me).
What this messed up completely my fault was the fact that I was anticipating a zero offset, 7 wide wheel. Zero offset = centered mounting face = 3.5 backspacing.
Wrong! 8 actual width means 4 of backspacing, and now I can say goodbye to the 3/8 of fender clearance. Now I have 1/8 of interference fit. Craaaaaaap.
You cannot find wheel adaptors slimmer than ¾ (nor would I want them, as they would start getting flimsy at that point). (Got mine at FTWadapters.com )
Out comes the Dremel, and off comes about 9/16 of rear fender lip! Just the top part, about an 18 length. (I better corrosion-protect the crap out of that new shiny metal edge).
And it all fit, with a little more than a quarter-inch of clearance. (and tons of clearance on the other side to clear the leaf spring). Whew!!
Since I didnt locate a previous thread with this level of detail, nor photos, I figured I share my experience.
Photos below:
1-Stock wheels, 14x5.5 with 3.5 of backspacing, wrapped in 205/70/14 tires. 5 x 4 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 dont protrude beyond the wheel adapter. (note: theyre still long enough to reattach the stock wheels)
4 install the adapter using the stock lug nuts to mount the adapter. New studs are 12x1.5 metric, since thats the acorn-style lug nuts I had on hand.
5 New wheels installed
6 Showing the ¼ to- 3/8 gap that remains. Close, but Im fine with it.
The tough part is that the selection of 5x4 small bolt pattern wheels is very, very limited, and all the wheels that we liked were not available in that bolt pattern. The Wilwood front disc brake retrofit kit we bought had the big bolt pattern 5x4.5 anyway, so the hard part became How To Best Convert the Rear Axle to LBP Studs. Redrill the axle flange for the BBP? Wheel adaptor/spacers?
The search feature of this forum is AWESOME, and after some historical reading on others advice, I concluded that this slant-six powered, 7 ¼ rear end Dart would be just fine with billet aluminum wheel adaptors on the rear.
A lot of careful measurements and scale drawings concluded that I could fit 7 wide wheels with no offset, and 225/55/16 tires (just about the stock 195/75/14 height), and use 3/4" thick wheel adapters, and still have about 3/8 clearance between the rear tire and the fender lip. For reference, I could not find 16" (or 17" wheels) in our price range that had the right amount of backspacing to compensate for the thickness of the adapters.
We down-selected the wheel that fit the budget and looked great (and classic enough). But after waiting 2+ months on back-order for Torq Thrust II wheels with the grey painted center, we finally gave up the waiting and ordered the same wheels in full-polish, which were in stock, albeit more expensive. The polished ones look really great, but we didnt choose them initially because they kind of fell in the trying too hard to look cool category (for a sedan). Oh well, time to cross that line. Maybe itll look okay with the new shiny paint job (B7 metallic blue) the car will get next month?
The wheels came in 2 days, and upon unpacking them I noted they looked w i d e. Then I learned that a 7 wide wheel is actually 8 wide, as the evil overlords of tire width advertising have sneakily made the standard width measurement as the tire bead width. (yes, I ignored the little Wheel 101 blurb on the web site that would have pointed this out to me).
What this messed up completely my fault was the fact that I was anticipating a zero offset, 7 wide wheel. Zero offset = centered mounting face = 3.5 backspacing.
Wrong! 8 actual width means 4 of backspacing, and now I can say goodbye to the 3/8 of fender clearance. Now I have 1/8 of interference fit. Craaaaaaap.
You cannot find wheel adaptors slimmer than ¾ (nor would I want them, as they would start getting flimsy at that point). (Got mine at FTWadapters.com )
Out comes the Dremel, and off comes about 9/16 of rear fender lip! Just the top part, about an 18 length. (I better corrosion-protect the crap out of that new shiny metal edge).
And it all fit, with a little more than a quarter-inch of clearance. (and tons of clearance on the other side to clear the leaf spring). Whew!!
Since I didnt locate a previous thread with this level of detail, nor photos, I figured I share my experience.
Photos below:
1-Stock wheels, 14x5.5 with 3.5 of backspacing, wrapped in 205/70/14 tires. 5 x 4 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 dont protrude beyond the wheel adapter. (note: theyre still long enough to reattach the stock wheels)
4 install the adapter using the stock lug nuts to mount the adapter. New studs are 12x1.5 metric, since thats the acorn-style lug nuts I had on hand.
5 New wheels installed
6 Showing the ¼ to- 3/8 gap that remains. Close, but Im fine with it.
