ah1955 said:
A little off subject maybe but I saw wallew said he has 22.5 wheels off U.P.S truck. Had read this somewhere before don't know who's post but I looked at a U.P.S truck after that and looked to me that one had 10 lug hub pilot wheel. Were the 6 lug Budd wheel an older truck wheel do they still use them and what would be a source of them. tubeless tires would be a huge plus becouse our fleet shop is all tubeless and they are so easy to work with
ah1955,
OK, I got four six lug budd wheels from RandlyLBarnes. HE got them from his tire vendor, who apparently is also the tire vendor for UPS. When they reach a certain mileage on the BROWN trucks you see delivering packages, they remove the outer rear dual wheel and replace it with a new one. It can't be cheap. But certainly not expensive as even one multi million dollar law suit.
Having said that, I also went to a big rig salvage yard and found several in excellent shape. UNFORTUNATELY, the guy though they were made of gold instead of steel and wanted $75 per wheel. I paid a lot less.
I got four of them from ebay, with brand new Michelin retreads on them from a guy locally. So that's where the other four of my eight six lug budd wheels came from. Randy's tire guy swapped out the new Michelin retreads for the larger set I wanted for $25 each. So for $500 total I got four new Michelin retreads (XDY2) and four six lug budd wheels. I paid a bit more for the other wheels (not much) and BUNDLE for the front NEW Michelin XDY1's (same tread as the XDY2 retreads). I paid almost $400 EACH for my front tires. Randy gave me a 22.5 inch tire to mount as a spare until I can come up with the $150 per copy for the XDY2 retreads I'll be using as spares. I will have two, so I gotta save up another $300.
BUT, I can change these myself or take them in to ANY truck stop and they can break them down and fix the problem and I'm "GOOD TO GO"! Plus I should get at least 100k miles out of them. As that will be the life of MY ownership of the deuce, I figure buying tires once, though expensive, isn't that bad, especially for tubeless radials.
Plus, given the tires are 42" tall, my top speed is now 64.5 mph at 2500 rpm. Verified with both a chase car AND GPS...
Life is good.
My thx goes to Randy.
jim
PS - I MAY be incorrect, but Randy's tire tool looked 'home made'. Like he took a regular breaker bar and added something to it. I've got a call in to Randy now, so hopefully he can log in and clear all this up.
His boss went on a SEVEN WEEK vacation (life is good for him), so Randy is not only running the shop, but is ALSO having to do his bosses job as well. I ain't heard from him in a couple of weeks, which is why I called him. j