Bullitt Wheels - How to open up bore?

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Haney

Haney

www.carsonandironmt.com
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Putting some OE MUSTANG Bullitt wheels on my Dart. For those who have used, exactly how Did you open up the hub for the mopar axle hub and rotor hub? Is this something you did at home? I know I can do with a die grinder or hole saw, but was worried about maintaining the hub centric condition?
 
A machine shop could do that on a lathe or mill. You would have to dismount the tires though.
 
A hole saw would be too crude for this job because you aren't going to be removing a lot of material. You "can" do it with a die grinder, but the correct way will be to do what toolmanmike said and take it to a machine shop. Its a simple job for them
 
I agree with prior posters that machine shop is the ideal place for this modification. However, I have modified both Lincoln LSC and Crown Vic alloys with my drill motor and a 2.75" diameter cone shaped bit I bought on Ebay. With it's larger diameter it's easier to control the amount of material you remove and to keep the center round. In both of these cases there was only about .060 of material that had to be removed from a cast in ring around the circumference ID of the center hole. Not sure if visible in pic. Not having looked at the "bullit" wheels up close I'm not sure how much material you have to remove. I did this myself because the machine shops I approached in Tucson were pretty consistent in wanting $100 per wheel to modify them. Their price, according to them, was based on the fact that the wheels were to large a diameter for their lathes and they had to do extensive set ups on a vertical mill.
 
I don't I think worries about "hub centric" are completely overblown. Most of my wheels from the 70's that I used were NOT hubcentric, most were aftermarket. I say take a die grinder and have at it

That POS old landcruiser I had never knew what hubcentric was, and it got dropped, kicked, hit, thrown, I don't know how else to describe what I did to that thing, in mudholes, rocks, logs, you name it. And it saw over a hundred a few times, too.
 
If it's an amount around .060, a cylinder hone with rough grit stones would work with enough cutting fluid. In this case, a small stream out of a garden hose would be about right to keep the stones clear.
 
Forgot to post photos. Agree with 67dart273 that the necessity of a perfect hub centric fit is over-blown based on the same experiences he had over the years.

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@garretellison - Your idea would likely work also. I did find that because these wheels are aluminum, the stone tended to load up with material and I had to re-dress the stone after each wheel or two. This might be the downside to using a finer stone than the course type I used.
 
Thank you for all the replies. Yes, the machine shops are pricey. I am getting the same prices. Even at half that, it defeats the purpose of getting bargain wheels. The center of the wheels measure about 2.75 and with my mics on the disk rotor hub, I need about 2.85 or so about 100 thou. I never thought about a stepped bit that big. That is a great idea and will help it stay centered.
 
@Haney - My bit was not stepped as you typed and (my poor memory) it was actually 2.5" diameter I just went and checked. I did notice that with so little clearance in the centerhole for the bit that I had to really keep the stone pressed hard against the rim. A couple of times in the beginning, before I got the hang of it, the stone would start to bounce around the center hole if I relaxed my tension. In addition I found that the process was much more friendly when using my slower (1800? RPM) drill motor rather than my die grinder (3500 RPM). About a .100 total equates to about .050 from the circumference. I had a broken rotor and used the cast bearing center area as a go/no go gauge that, when put up to the wheel, showed me there was not that much to remove. I also used it during the grinding process to limit excess material removal. I'll add that the first set of these I did for someone else and they've had zero issues with their use over the last 5 years and about 25K miles or so while driving very enthusiastically and banging gears leaving every stoplight.
 
How brave are you?
I ran into a similar problem years ago with BBS wheels with a too small center bore for my car.
Careful measuring and math and a rabbet bit (a good quality one from Lee Valley) and a 5/8 hp router and I opened up the center bore to almost perfectly match the recipients bore.
I will say this-I was shaking like a dog pooping razor blades but the bit cut the aluminum like nothing.

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@Ian McCrimmon - I like your idea a lot. In my instance the cost of a router and bit makes my simpler, though less precise method, more cost effective. But if OP already has a router.........best of both worlds.

There have been other threads about hub centric vs. lug centric wheels on this site. After reviewing them I did not see an answer regarding best clearance between wheel ID and rotor/axle pilot. Can they be exact? Is .010 enough? to much?
 
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i used the router this morning to open up the wheel spacers i use
(only about 3/16th thick)

mostly used it to clean up the cut i made earlier, but it went quite well
 
I've gone the other way. Removed my studs and used a flap disc on my grinder and spin the rotor. Only needed to take a little off to get the clearance needed. Only needed to remove a little over a millimeter.
 
Bullitt wheels have a a lot of backspcing. On my 68 I had to use spacer/longer studs on the front, and a . 75-1" adapter on the rear. With the spacers, I found that the wheels needed no machining.
 
Just use good shank lug nuts. Nice fitting and all that. The stamped steel acorn lug nuts were self centering, the shank nuts need to be the right size to fit the rims. Even some AL rims use an acorn style lug nut (thought they would start to crack?) but the 2012 Dodge Caravan I have uses 'em. But they use the STUPID 18mm metric with the cheesy metal cap on them to make them 3/4..and those damn things always deform.
 
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