Hayes wire wheel rear hubs

[Kevin Pharis]

Sooooo… most of you know that I have very little sense when it comes to making good decisions, but I do have a soft spot for wire wheels. Noticing that there have been several posts lately regarding the typical keyway failure of Hayes wire wheel rear hubs, I was considering producing a batch of these hubs. I have no intentions of producing the brake drums, but figure that the center hub would be a fairly easy carry over from the existing efforts to produce my Buffalo wire wheel hubs. If anyone might be interested, I would be looking for a volunteer to provide a junk rear wheel center, preferably with drum, so that it could be copied. I have the capability to re-spoke and true these wheels as well should the project progress. Please feel free to contact me here, or off line, to discuss.

If no interest, no worries, I will simply continue to obsess over my countless other ridiculous projects…

[Allan]

That is a very good project Kevin. For my own use I had two castings made from an original hub. Not having the means of machining the keyways, I machined the castings to take a pressed in, machined down, original T hub centre.

Going on your past excellent efforts, can I assume you will machine the entire hub from billet stock. The original castings are far from perfect, whereas your efforts are. They would be noticeably different to a casting, something some people may see as undesirable.

Having the brake drums available would be a great step. Many are worn. Two I have are rusted really thin. I have worked out a compromise using a standard T brake drum, but it will not be original to the eye of those who know what they are looking at, just like the front wheels adapted to the rear that some have done.

Allan from down under.

[Kevin Pharis]

You are correct Allan, I would machine from solid to best resemble the originals

[Allan]

Then the answer may be a handful of sawdust thrown at the hub while the paint is still wet! I did this once on steel patch repair to an early 1913 engine block. The texture matched the casting perfectly.

Allan from down under.

[Hudson29]

For those of us who have Hayes wires on our cars and not heard of issues with them, what problems do they have? I have never had them off or noticed any trouble. How do you tell if they need attention?

Paul

[Kevin Pharis]

Looks like you may already know about the typical failures of the Hayes wire wheels, as your car is equipped with front wheels adapted to rears. All wood and wire wheels suffer from the same typical hub failures, spun bearing races up front and wallowed out keyways in rear. The Hayes hubs are integral to the wheel and so a worn hub typically means a scrap wheel. This would be an opportunity to salvage any extra rims or drums and turn them into wheels

[Allan]

Paul, your rear wheels are front wheels adapted to Ford hubs with large brake drums, so I cannot comment on them. I do not know how the adaption was made, but yours would not be the only ones. The good thing in your case is any repairs may be easy to make using standard T parts.

Allan from down under.

[Hudson29]

I had no idea about this. These wheels were on the car when I bought it and I thought it was supposed to look that way. I know that it has an original set of Rockies, the ones that work in reverse and that the hand brake lever makes no discernable reduction in speed or holding the car when parked.

Paul

[Kevin Pharis]

There were 30x3-1/2” and 21” rim variations of Hayes wire wheels. Both had the rear hub made up of the outer “snout”, and the inner drum. The snout did most of the work, but the drum is drilled to accept the inner row of spokes, making it a structural part of the rear hub. This drum doubles as the emergency brake drum and so the spokes interfere with most (maybe all) accessory brakes

[Hudson29]

Thanks for that, I had no idea that the rear wheels were made that way. The ones on my car do allow the Rockies but I'm not sure if it is a later large drum or the earlier small drum setup. I would love to see a picture of the Hayes rear wheel to see what was different.

Paul

[Allan]

Here you go Paul.

Allan from down under.

[Hudson29]

Thanks, now that I see these pictures I can see that mine are different and the earlier discussion about brake drums makes sense. I'll save the pics for future reference.

Paul