Radial tires

Habusailor

Habusailor

Senior Member
I put radials on my 57 Fairlane and have trouble with the front wheel covers moving on the rims. One will move so the valve stem is not coming out of the hole in the wheel cover, the other one just flies off and ends up in the road ditch. It flies off on the straight away just cruising down the road. Any one else have this problem and any solutions I could try?


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I had that same problem on my '57 Fairlane 500 when I braked hard once in a panic stop. I bent the prongs on the back of the caps , so that it fit tighter on the wheel.
Some guys have had good luck "gluing" them on w/silicon, but I would try to avoid that.
 
Have ya ever noticed how if an original wheel is sandblasted clean, there will be grooves all around where the friction tabs of the wheel cover fit into them.
Every time you pull off a full wheel cover those tabs dig a little more metal out of the rim.
Over 66 years ya got some pretty deep grooves and the tabs have less to hang on to.
Never heard of anybody attempting to fill in those grooves with solder or lead, but if they did, it wouldn't last long.
Thing to do in order to strengthen the hold of the wheel cover on the rim is to bend a few of those tabs outward a little bit.
On my '55 wheel covers I bent the tabs on four groups, equally distant at 90 degrees away from each other. Don't bend too much or you will scrape more metal from the rim than needed. Just get a fairly good bite.
 
Habusailor,


When putting new radials on my '55 the lead weights used to balance them slightly prevented the hubcap from fitting snuggly. Also the tabs on mine grip pretty good, so the only way to get the hubcaps on firmly is to use a rubber mallet. So if you're able to put them on with little effort, definitely try bending the tabs to get a snugger fit.


Good luck,
 
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