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The new wheels I purchased rubbed against the front tie rod ends. I ground off the end of the tie rod ends, but they still scraped occasionally. I've thought about how to solve this off and on ever since. I have some 10 inch rims that don't rub; however, they require new tires, as the old ones were too cracked and became potato planters. Plus, I still have fears of tires that are too wide, especially with sloppy non-power steering. I decided after over a year of thought to put quarter inch wheel spacers on the wheels. I purchased Gorilla SP603C spacers. The first task, though was to put in longer wheel studs. It turned out that my hub was rivited to one of my drums:
Here you can see the side facing the wheel. See how the rivet would cause the spacer to balance on the top of the rivets:
That is no good. I had to remove the rivets. Back in 1987 I had a '55 GMC pickup. One of the brake drums was badly grooved. I'm not sure how seriously I thought about having the drum turned. It may have been too far gone. I called around and found a wrecking yard in Springfield that had a drum they said would work. Urbana and I went out to the wrecking yard and they sent a guy out to pull the part. He came back and tossed the drum ten feet into the windshield of the wrecked car we were standing next to and said, "there you go". I'm not sure if we did something wrong like not pull the part ourselves, or if that was just his way of having fun. We charged the drum on some plastic, and the guy at the counter forced the imprint machine across the card even though it was in crooked and cracked the card.
We lived in an apartment building that didn't allow car repairs in the parking lot, but I didn't really have much of a choice, so I worked on the truck in the lot anyway. The hub, it turns out, was riveted to the drum. It was a long time ago, but I'm guessing I pulled the whole wheel off to see that the drum was scored and bought the new drum from the wrecking yard. To remove the drum I used a cold chisel to remove the rivets. I spent hours in the parking lot of our apartment complex banging on that cold chisel. The drum magnified the glorious sound. We thought for sure the landlord, Les, would have something to say, but he never did. So I'm used to the idea of removing rivets. Here is a picture of the old 610-186 wheel stud:
Here are the specifications of the Dorman 610-186:
Timken bearings are still made in the U.S., and so are Dorman wheel studs. I want the best metal for both, so I purchased longer 610-157 Dorman wheel studs so that I had plenty of room left for the spacer:
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