hub cap rattle

freak

freak

Senior Member
Any ideas on how to stop hubcaps from rattling? At least one of mine rattles and it is annoying. It's secure and not going to fall off but still rattles in the wheel.
 
Tabs are bent over inside the rim.. If you tighten up the tabs better you should be ok..not all of them need to be bent... My experience has been is they won't rattle after securing them on good
 
Two or three small spots of silicone from the back side will fix the rattles and still let you remove them later on if you need to. But if the tabs are bent over tight they should not rattle
 
Take the wheel off and check the tabs. Some be missing/broken. I like to bend 4 or 5 over to secure the hubcap. Usually the ones near the lug holes on the rim. I start them with a small pair of pliers then lay the wheel upside down on a bunch of towels. Then use a screwdriver and hammer to secure the tabs to the rim. Then I check to see if the hubcap moves before I put the wheel back on.

Brian
 
For my 30-31 hubcaps I use a 3" or so thin O ring between the tabs and the inside of the wheel. The round hair thing that girls use on their hair to hold it also works well and you can get them easily.
 
Yes, the hubcap rattle from the mangled tabs (former owner) required some kind of patience & skill I couldn't seem to muster so I clinched them the best I could & used the rubber o'rings from our 013 Camry used oil filters to act as seals/spacers ---they look & work great & I think are similar to what Mike's sells for cheap. I was going to order a set but found w/ my scrounge technology the Toyo filter ones did the trick. (I always save O rings)
BTW , stretching & popping in O rings seal the gap keeping out moisture & center the cap .
 
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O-Rings ? Gaskets ?

WHAT could be better than a couple of dabs of Silicone ?

Simple, cheap, non-Invasive, Removable.
 
The tab forming tool is great. I bend all ten tabs, feels tighter. It takes a little time to form them correctly. If you use O-rings you will have space the tool the thickness of the O-ring. They look like an electrical box knock-out plug when you get done. Haven't had a rattler or lost one in 8 years.
 
First of all I have never heard of hubcap gaskets. I bend over half the tabs and place a gob of clear silicone on each one. No more rattles! Wayne
 
Interesting to find this topic at this time . . .

Yesterday afternoon, I pulled off the "symbolic" spare wheel from the back of the 31' Tudor so as to repaint the thing. Dislike color wheels on bread n' butter Model A Ford cars and this one came with RED. What sort of nut job paints the wheels on a Model A ford the color "RED"? Anyway, the spare wheel was removed and hub cap then taken off. After pressure washing, the wheel was blast painted a pleasing gloss BLACK. Later on when dried, the well polished hub cab was re-installed and numerous tabs carefully bent back into place nice n' snug. Mounted the wheel onto the spare holder and tightened the bolts as not to scratch up the new paint job. When done it was however noticed that the stupid hub cap was slightly loose so as to rattle. No way am I taking off that dumb wheel again any time soon. Forget about it!

So . . . the remedy was . . . . (Mister Bert Parks . . . the envelope please!) The winner is . . . . "LIQUID SUPER GLUE". And all the kiddies in the Peanut Gallery start screaming with delight. That's right River Rouge fans . . . . this incredibly clever home fix-it person used LIQUID SUPER GLUE" on a Model A Ford. Hell . . . it works like gangbusters on my 32-year old Mercedes Benz diesel sedan which is 67% plastic. It just took two (2) itsy bitsy teeny tiny drops of "LIQUID SUPER GLUE" to kibosh the hub cap rattle. The next idiot who has to remove that hub cap will likely need to use dynamite but I don't care.
 
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I have original caps in quite nice shape. When I had the wheels off I took a 1/2 inch by 8-10 inch wooden dowel and holding the cap against my leg, put the dowel on each tab, through the rim center and gave it a tap. No rattle, the tabs are bent out quite a bit so I suppose it will be a bit difficult to get them off but they are nice and tight anyway.
 
I guess my A is not running like all of your A's I don't think I can hear a hub cap rattling around when I drive around! With all of the other rattles:eek:
 
Here is a fix. Take string, and from the inner center of the cap run the string out between two of the tabs. Run the string around the outside of the tabs and back into the center of the same gap you started from, and cut. Now you have just enough of a ring of string to serve as a gasket. It tightens and silences the cap.
 
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