5-Star Rating!
The votes are in and you chose....the Vintage 190 Aluminum Wheels. Great choice! It was closer than we expected, but we approve of this choice. We'll get these old wheels and tires removed and get the new ones mounted. This gets us one step closer to being able to drive this car to the VW Round Up in November.
Wheel Poll Results
- 15% Stock Style Chrome Wheels
- 37% Vintage 190 Aluminum Wheels
- 27% BRM Wheels
- 21% 5 Spoke EMPI Wheels
Video Transcript
I'm not sure what looks better. Okay I lied, I’m sure. That looks a lot better.
Well, it was closer than I thought it was gonna be, but the Vintage 190s are what it's gonna be. And I'm okay with that. The Vintage 190s are cool, uh stock looking wheel, but they are aluminum so you get a little bit more style points. Or, you know, I don't actually, never even checked the weight, they might be a little bit lighter than the stock steel wheels. But actually, stock steel wheels are relatively light, but anyways, take a look at the numbers here real quick.
Stock style wheels 15 percent currently, 37 percent with the Vintage 190s, 27 percent of the BRMs, and 21 percent on the five spoke EMPIs. Uh that's going for 443 votes and the poll's been up for a total of six days. But yeah, we're gonna end up going with the Vintage 190s. And we are going to do a staggered set; four and a half in the front five and a half's on the rear. We're going to go with some 145s on those front wheels and some 165 sr15s on those rears. So let's get those pulled and put on some tires.
So we got our four tires 145s, 165s. Oh and it's a crisp 77 degrees this morning. A heck of a lot better than the triple digits we've had for the last couple of weeks. Uh it's supposed to get to like 101 today, but it's Phoenix. What do you expect? Gonna grab some wheels.
Well turns out that there happens to be a Firestone just around the corner from the shop so I'm gonna drop off the Firestone wheels and tires, well Firestone tires, Firestone tires at Firestone to be mounted and balanced.
All right, we've got wheels and tires. Old wheels and tires, let's get rid of these guys.
I'm not going underneath so I'm not running jack stands. If I was going to go underneath I'd run jack stands.
Stock lug nut, not quite going to work so we'll swap these guys out for some longer ones. See we get a little bit more length versus a stock lug bolt. That's much better. A lot more room to stick them in.
Maybe those are coming off sooner than I planned. That don't sound good.
These are the Vintage 190 Wheels, a nice thick aluminum wheel and they actually come with clips and hardware that you can install, if you so choose, so that these will actually accept a stock hubcap. And I did check the weight. These weigh I want to say it's about, shipping weight now this is obviously the box is going to be a little bit of weight, but 13 and a quarter on the four and a half so I want to say it's 13 and three quarters on the five and a half. I pulled up the weight of our stock chrome steel wheel the four and a half inch wheel is about 15 and three quarters pounds and the five and a half inch steel wheel is about 19 and three quarters wheels. So these are actually a significant, you know couple pounds of weight savings versus that stock wheel.
So here we are, new stock, hi, hubcap. Boom. Looks like pretty much a stock wheel, doesn't it. That looks really, really good. I was thinking about doing like a nipple cap because I've always been a fan of the Porsche nipple caps with like a Wolfsburg crest or something else, but you know what, that just looks so good. I'm just going to go with that. Look at that wheel. That just looks just so darn good. I love it. I love it. That's the money shot, right there.
Nice. One more to go. That one rolls pretty good too, nice.
This wheel’s seen better days. So has the tire, honestly. That one ain't bad. Unfortunately the rest of them ain’t in so good a shape so we got new wheels and tires anyway.
All right since we got a swing axle, I'm going to push this thing back get forth and back and forth to get that rear end to squat down. Because those swing axles, when the tires come down they sit on their edges and then you gotta roll back and forth and back and forth until you flatten out in the rear which will let that rear end settle a little bit. And then we can take a look at how much tire gap we've got there and plan from there.
Well that looks much better, but obviously we got some gap there to take care of.
I think a set of drop spindles is in order. And for safety's sake, while we're doing drop spindles we might as well do some disc brakes. Very common upgrade in the name of safety's sake. I'm putting disc brakes on the front of this. Yeah it's going to cost more than just rebuilding the drums. Versus completely replacing all the drums, brakes, shoes wheel cylinders, all the hardware versus the cost of a disc brake kit, the disc brake kit is going to cost a couple bucks more. Maybe about 100 bucks or so more, but again, in the name of safety, the added benefits far outweigh the costs especially since I'm gonna have at least one of my kids in this car with me driving. Uh I don't want to shortcut on safety. That's why I'm going to go through and replace all the wiring. So uh the next two things I'm thinking right now are brakes and drop spindles kind of the one the same; it's a drop spindle disc brake kit. We'll get that put on uh and then of course wiring. And note, this is all before I've even gone through and worked on the engine. Now I did get it broken free. I thought I was recording. Unfortunately the camera wasn't, but after a lot of tugging you back and forth and back and forth on the crank all of a sudden it just broke free. So yeah, we've got a couple things to do over the next few days before we even get to getting an engine going.
Notice that I'm doing all this before I even do the engine. If I can't stop it and if it's not safe electronically, or electrically, what's the point of having an engine running? You're going to be tempted to go out and drive and what happens if something catches on fire on the electrical harness or, lo and behold, you can't stop this engine that you've just now got going? So I'm doing the brakes and I'm going to do electrical before I even really dig into that engine much further.
So, thanks for watching guys. Catch us in the next one.
