ford wheels on 4-lug vw hub

Hello,

I have a 1976 beetle with 4-lug hubs, and I'm trying to mate 5-lug ford wheels to it.

The ford wheels come with 5-lug vw to 5-lug ford adapters (which of course do me no good). As far as I can tell from shopping the catalogs,

5-lug VW to ford adapters do not exist.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for me, or am I sunk trying to put this particular wheel on this particular car?

Thanks, Scott

Reply to
Scott
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Are you sure adapters won't push the wheels too far out? Anywho, you can have drums or discs drilled for custom wheels.

Reply to
johnboy

Drilling is possible, it does work. Many will tell you it weakens the drums significantly.

These people can sort out any adapter for your VW

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Rich

johnboy wrote:

Reply to
tricky

I'm going to look into getting some custom drums with a ford pattern -- upon inspection my current drums are in poor condition, so it wouldn't hurt to have new drums all the way around.

I'm assuming with "custom" drums they start with a blank drum, so weakening should not be an issue, but I'll be finding that out for sure when I talk to some shops today.

Other alternatives that I've found involve using wide-5 drums with the wide-5 to ford adapters. Supposedly a wide-5 "thing" drum will bolt up fine in the rear, and wide-5 66-67 front drums can be used with 68 inner bearings in the front. At least that's what I've read on the net...

Scott

Reply to
Scott

depends on the wheel. remember offset issues.

Reply to
johnboy

okay, new question...

What I've decided to do is to mount the existing 66 drums to the 76 beetle. The bettle has an IRS rear axle.

As I understand, spacers need to be used when putting the wide-5 drum on the IRS axle. The spacer is inserted between the drum and the axle nut. This is because the IRS stub axles are a little too long for the smaller drum. This I understand...

The problem I've run into is that the 66 drum "bottoms out" on the backing plate. It appears to me that an additional spacer is needed on the other side of the drum (i.e. between the drum and the axle bearings).

Has anyone else done this conversion (i.e. put a wide-5 drum on an IRS) and do I need another spacer on the inside?

Thanks, Scott

Reply to
Scott

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