Wheel Center bore problem

[vangremlin]

I found out the center bore on the Mercury wheels is a bit smaller than the normal Eagle/Jeep wheels - 70.3mm vs. 71.5mm.  Its causing interference with the hub.  The mechanic I use suggested I find somebody to bore the hole bigger.  Anyone got suggestions on what type of shop might do that kind of work?  Or do I just take a grinder to them and do a less precise job?  Thanks in advance.

[AMC of Houston]

That's a common AMC problem -- trying to use Ford wheels on them.    I don't see any problem with hogging out the holes, as long as your lug holes are tight ( so the lug nuts will keep things centered well).

[mo.eagles]

  I did something similar with a hole saw  and a wooden plug .  I drilled a plug out of a 2x4 and left it in the hole saw as a guide in the wheel hole and cut the wheel to the right size (or as close as possible). In your case it would be a 2 and 13/16 "  hole saw .  If that makes sense.  But yes a grinder would OK .

[carnuck]

There is a way of doing them with a cylinder hone depending on the style.

[twoslowinwyo]

the best way to do this is to take them to a local machine and have them bored. you will need to find a shop that has a lathe with a big enough swing to handle it. .010-.020 clearence is good. that will keep them from being too sloppy. i have done quite a few myself, it takes less than an hour to do four of them. LAZ

[carnuck]

I used to have a pipe lathe from a company that did Natural Gas and oil pipelines. Very large pass through head on it with 2 jaws. One hung off the "back of the head" which had plenty of room to put a 40" tire with rim on so I could open the hole or just buff it up so rust didn't stick the wheel to the hub. it wasn't as accurate as the bed side, but it worked for stuff like this. An old tire balance machine could be modded the same way.

[vangremlin]

Thanks everybody for your responses.  I did find a machine shop that will do this for me at a reasonable price, so hope to get that taken care of next week.  The name of the shop is ---

AMC Machining!!!  How appropriate

[mudkicker715]

I had some alloys from an aerostar once, and used a grinding wheel on a drill. It was a pita

[Petr]

Hi,

I´m probably before the same problem. I would like to buy chrome discs and I´m not able to find out the right center bore. Do you have any tip? I don´t want to use centering rings.
The second is ET. Don´t you know how is the factory´s ET on discs in our Eagles? Do you think I might use ET -10? It means wheels would be wider (as they told me in shop) about 3cm (1,181") on each side. I would like to know what happen after turning of wheel.

[vangremlin]

Hi,

I´m probably before the same problem. I would like to buy chrome discs and I´m not able to find out the right center bore. Do you have any tip? I don´t want to use centering rings.
The second is ET. Don´t you know how is the factory´s ET on discs in our Eagles? Do you think I might use ET -10? It means wheels would be wider (as they told me in shop) about 3cm (1,181") on each side. I would like to know what happen after turning of wheel.

The machine shop did a good job of making the center bore the right size.  They did not take off enough material on the first attempt, but I took them back and made the holes a little larger, everything is working fine. 

[carnuck]

Are we talking wheel rims? I'm not with it tonight.

[Petr]

Yes, we are talking about rims.