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Some of the earlier pictures showed OW with wheels. This was a temporary situation so we could move her. For the wheels to
be mounted permanently, I've had to learn a lot, and do some serious fabrication.
The choice for OW wheels: 305x45x17 makes her look "aggressive". However, with these big feet, mounting
the wheels to the front rotors and rear axles is not so simple. The wheels interfere with the chassis. To solve the problem, spacers had to be inserted between the mounting surfaces. Purchasing spacers
was possible, but they just would not work. These spacers were "bolt-centric", meaning that the wheel reference position was by the wheel studs. Our choice of wheels are
"hub-centric": the wheel reference position is obtained by a 3" circular protrusion on the rear axle and a precision turned mounting surface on the front rotors. This is where the big
problem was presented: It was not possible to purchase an appropriate sized hub-centric spacer for OW.
So...
We thought about having some spacers built in a machine shop. The cost of this
would add up to $500-$1000. As luck would have it, Harbor Freight had on sale a very nice combination metal lathe and milling machine for about the same price as purchasing fabricated spacers. So, I
purchased the machine and built the spacers from scratch.
A trip to the salvage yard got me 35 pounds of 1/2" aluminum plate at a bargain price of $1 per pound. This was the raw material.
Then the work began. Below is a collage of the progress... enjoy
The spacers were built in 2 pieces: the spacer itself which is a disk of aluminum about 1" thick, 7" in diameter, with 5 holes for the
wheel studs (with 1/2" plate, I had to sandwich 2 pieces to get the right thickness). The second piece is the hub: a precision piece that locates the wheel accurately on the rotor/rear axle. These
were fabricated separately and pressed together.
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