Steel big rig wheels?

Yeah, you need to look a lot closer at how a wheel is designed, there's no way you're going to cut a 24.5 down to 22, it's no way near that simple. It's not like the wheel is one big solid piece, think about it, to cut a 24.5 down to 22 the hoop of the wheel would have to be several inches thick to start with.

The reason an aluminum semi wheel is able to be milled down to a non-heavy truck size is because they're so damn thick for strength that enough material can safely be removed to let a passenger type tire fit and still be strong enough to be used in a 1 ton dually application. The steel wheels aren't as thick in the areas that would be milled down.

Richard

Makes sense, I wasn't looking at it in the right way. Thanks for educating me.

ive never looked at a steel wheel, but 24.5 would need .125 cut off one side of the wheel diameter to make .5 on the total outside diameter.

im sure there has to be .125 on the outside of a steel wheel, which could be trimmed.

there must be something else to be the reason.

maybe trevor or the like can clue us in or link us to the discussion someone already had..?

there actually needs to be 0.250 cut off all the way around to make it 0.500 inches shorter...im sure if there was enough material to mill them down they would be readily available

The outer diameter of any aluminum semi wheel ( Alcoa, Accuride ) is not what's altered when milling / cutting to fit a passenger vehicle tire. Now, without revealing secrets..... The area that is changed, the steel wheel just doesn't have the material. Cannot be done. Hope this helps, Darrell

It may or may not be the inner lip. From my research the inner lip on a stock semi wheel is kind of like " | \__/ | " that and a stock inner lip looks " ||__|| ". If that makes any sence...

We attempted this process when we first started these wheels almost 10 years ago and it still has not been done today. You can mill the wheel but the edges are paper thin and out of the 2 wheels we did, both cracked when applying air pressure to seat the beads on the tires. That was all I needed to see to know that it was not a feasible process on the steel wheels.

The problem with making the new steels in 22s they will be more expensive than the aluminums we already sell.

We can make a set of aluminums that look like any of the 2, 4, or 5 hole steels you see on the road. They will be lighter and will be stronger.