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Trailer rim suggestions needed

M

Mathias NY

Well-known Member
I am working on building a small dump trailer (4"x8" bed) for the farm. The axle is from the front of a 1940"s Plymouth 2 ton truck. My grandfather salvaged it about 40 years ago to build a trailer with and didn"t live long enough to finish the project. I still have the original 16" rims, but they are the old split ring design.

The rings are pretty rusty and I"m not too keen on working with them. My plan is to cut off the old rings and weld a flange onto the rim instead. Once the tube and tire is installed, I will bolt a larger flange onto the first one to hold it all in place. The concept is kind of like a modified bead-lock system. They will not be used under high pressure or high speed, so I believe this might just work.

Has anyone else tried this before? Obviously the weld quality is critical, but I"m not sure what else to watch out for.
 
Dad redrilled and threaded the hub on the axle for a 6 bolt common implement tire for a similar deal. That worked fine and seemed much safer. He did it with a hand held drill and was less than 100% perfect but it all works fine for a tractor-pulled trailer.

When you fill the tire to seat the bead, your modified rim & bolts are going to take a big jolt. Just seems hard to mess with and keep safe, at times those rims take an impressive shock load....

Good luck however you do it and stay safe.

--->Paul
 
If the truck is a 2 ton , it doesn't have 16" wheels , they'd be 20" Did you mean a 1/2 ton ? That would be a 16" That is likely a 5 bolt pattern , which they continued on up to the seventies. Take your Hub to a junk yard and try it out on some Dodge .Plymouth or even Ford Passenger wheels, I wouldn't weld the lockrings on , there is no way to put a tire and tube on or off it with the lockring welded A splitrim doesn't have a gutter like a drop center (car )wheel does.
 
As noted, with no drop center to put the bead in as it goes over the rim flange, the only way to get a tire on it would be before you weld the flange. Do not do that, it is deadly!!!!! Find a Utube of welding a rim with a tire on it. They explode with great drama and death.
Ford and Chrysler corp used the same patterns if it is 5 bolt. Check the wheel bolt pattern charts to see what else fits. Jim
 
Thanks for the replies so far. I guess I should have clarified, the second flange would be bolted in place (just like on bead-lock style rim). This way a drop center would not be needed and the tire would be removable.

The rims are 6 bolt and I have not found anything else comparable. The holes are 7.25" on center. It's quite possible that the description of the donor truck incorrect, but the wheel studs are both left and right hand thread.
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I just did some searching at pictures of old Dodge trucks. These are definitely not from a 2 ton truck. They look like they might be from a 1949-51 Dodge Route-truck van. Were these rims used on anything else?
 
Isn't the axle from a 2 ton truck kinda overkill for a 4X8 trailer? (I assume you meant 4X8 feet, not inches).
 
IMO they are Budd wheels. I would not recommend that you put a interior facing flange on the rim and then bolt to that a rim flange extending outward to catch the bead. My reasoning is that engineering it to be actually safe with unknown metals might be difficult. What if the tire was low and a friend put 75 psi in it because it said 75 on the tire. Blammy and dead. Cut off the existing rim, and put on a drop center welding that would be easy and far safer because the heat affected area would be away from the bead forces.
I have seen split rims blown 150 feet into a field with my wife driving a loaded truck. (she is great behind the wheel). I have seen 80 PSI blow a split rim through a corrugated metal roof.
My brothers I-9 blue a rear rim flange at 18 psi in the night and broke windows 70 feet away. Jim
 
Why don't you take your rims to a good welding shop and have the centers cut out and have them weld the centers in a common 16 rim, that way there is plenty of tires to select from for years to come. FIL had this done on a trailer he made from a 1950 one ton chevy truck that had a dump style box on it. I've hauled over 3000 lbs with this trailer at times and he did this almost twenty years ago. chris
 
I'm just real worried about welding a bead-holding flange on. I don't think you realize what 40-70lbs of air pressure is capible of. Welding a flange on to bolt a flange on - oh boy that sounds like someone is going ot get hurt badly over the next 10 years. I don't care for it at all.

1. Take the rims to a tire shop, must be an ag tire shop somewhere around you - they will look them over & mount them right up for about $20 a piece if good - lot cheaper than your monkeying around with welding and bolting.

2. Take to a welding shop and have the centers welded into a rim. Or weld it yourself - if it fails it will be bad, but not horribly dangerous if around the farm.

3. Salvage yard or do a search for that size rim in a drop-center setup.

I'm just terribly uncomfortable with how dangerous your plan could turn out to be. Tire lip has increadable much explosive pressure.

--->Paul
 
Mathias, for safety's sake, DO NOT WELD ON WHEELS,WITH TIRES ON THEM! Don't believe me? Google tire explosion. As others have said, cut the centers out, weld them into modern rims, problem solved. Nobody gets hurt.
 
I would sooner sandblast and paint the originals up and use them as to use them in a modified condition. A tire cage and a clip on air chuck with alot of hose is your friend ! You can even loop a chain through that type of rim.

The best idea I heard was to cut the centers all the way out and reweld on NEW rims.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I removable rings on these rims are badly rusted and I would not trust reusing them. The comment about not trusting the metalurgy to hold the weld is a good point. (just to clarify I was never intending to weld with the tire installed)

My new plan is to buy a new set of 16" drop center blank rims and have the local welding shop make a new set of centers to fit. It's going to be a little more expensive than I was hoping for, but is probably better long term for safety reasons.
 
My friend hit the garage ceiling when one of those old rims let go.My 4x8 trailer has an axle from a 53 Chevy.When I built my log hauler I used a pair of Plymouth auto rims.I bought new hubs and stub axles.When you work with junk the end product always looks like junk.
 
If I wanted to build a trailer today I would use the rear axle from a 3/4 ton pickup.I made a nice trailer from a worn out pickup.Cut the chassis just under the windshield area, notched it and pulled the chassis together to form a hitch point.
 
You say they will not be used under high speed or pressure....

However, it is VERY likely that you will grossly overload these rims and tires, so you want your solution to be reliable under those conditions.

Rather than deal with the existing rims, I would recommend cutting the centers out of these rims and welding them into standard 16" pickup truck rims.
 
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