Tire changer adapter
Tire changer adapter
My 66 project beetle, for some reason, had pre-66 style wheels on it. I managed to round up 4 "correct" wheels for the 66, but they had no tires or tires were old and gnarly and leaky. I wanted to remove them, and swap the good tires from the "old" rims to the "new" ones, but didn't want to pay a tire shop to do it because I just plan to use the old tires temporarily. I've had one of those "portable" tire changers for quite a while now (Harbour Freight in the USA ..about $50 ...or about $80 at Princess Auto in Canada) but it is not designed for old VW rims: the center support plate is too small. So, with a couple of 11.5 inch circles of plywood, some glue, a drill, five carriage bolts, ten nuts and five washers, I built the adapter plate shown in the photos below. After changing the good tires from the old rims to the newer ones, I found that it works really slick, but I could have gotten away with only about 3 bolts, rather than 5. Now, I'm looking for some large wing-nuts to use, or may make some by welding half washers onto the nuts. I also have one of those portable wheel balancers from Harbour Freight / Princess Auto ....they work fine as well. It only takes the changing of about 4 tires to make this equipment pay for itself!!
- Attachments
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- Adapter plate with the carriage bolts pushed thru from the bottom and held in place with a top nut. The washers go on the bolts once the wheel is on the adapter as the lug bolt holes are bit too large for the nuts I used. The underlying plate for "no
- wheel adapter 3.jpg (45.07 KiB) Viewed 4029 times
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- Setting up to mark the hole positions on the adapter plate. (The garden hose is not part of the project!!)
- wheel adapter 2.jpg (54.56 KiB) Viewed 4029 times
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- test fitting the adapter onto the tire changer
- wheel adapter 1.jpg (44.27 KiB) Viewed 4029 times
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Blue Baron
- Senior Member
- Posts: 879
- Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 8:34 pm
- Location: Tampa, Florida