Its a rear wheel from a Chinese quad. After some measuring I determined that the wheel would work perfectly. All I had to do was......cut it in half, narrow it, trim the lug tabs, make templates for the hub, drill the holes, and weld the wheel back together. That's all.
The wheel
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Made a contraption to guide my marker for consistency, taped it for visibility. Ready to cut.
Used my reciprocating saw to cut it. As you can see from the second pic where it shows a consistent rub from the blade all the way around, I'm surgical with this b!+¢π.
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Cut the center section to narrow the rim. There was some intense math going on before this to ensure that my new rim will be centered.
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Then I very carefully removed the lug tabs from the wheel, creating the circle center I wanted. Then I made some templates. Although they may look rough in the pics, the templates are extremely precise where they need to be. Went ahead and drilled the new lug pattern, and the hub is now centered perfectly and the little protrusions on the hub fit very nicely inside the center circle.
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Now we get to see my beautiful welding job. Aww maybe I'll show that one later, for now I'll just show this one lol..... I ran flux core wire on this because I didn't want to be just stacking a pretty weld on there, I wanted penetration and strength without any doubt. Granted it only has to hold 5-7psi, but seating the bead is always a white knuckle experience on a halved and welded wheel. Just for fun I showed the scorched powder coat on the other half as well.
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After I flap wheel the weld with a dremel tool I will address any through pinholes, which I don't think there are. If itll hold air for 24 hours it will be doing better than the brand new wheels I just bought that I had to get replaced.
And there it is. Here in a bit I'm going to attempt my first video upload to show it rolling across the shop floor, not wobbling or bouncing or changing width the entire way.
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Originally Posted by slashfan7964
