Spare?

Looked in the Summit catalog - wow, drag wheels are fantastically expensive! There's a Summit brand rim for $90, 15X4. Will a 15 go over the stock brakes? How wide is the spare?

Jack the R wrote:

LARRY70GS wrote:

Jack the R wrote:

Would it be worthwhile to look for a narrow aftermarket rim that would fit our bolt pattern and not stick up out of the tire well? Maybe a thin drag rim? Just a thought . . .

Jack,
Did you look here? http://www.autopartsfair.com/buick-usedparts/riviera-1998-wheel.html?fit_notes=3efb2c4f607885203ae7e7c8f240c1d0&seq_num=1

Those prices are shipped. I just picked up a 7 spoke Chrome Riviera wheel from this website, and it was damn near perfect.

I wouldn't trust such old rubber.

I would not trust old rubber either -- which is why I'd call a junkyard. Most likely the donut and wheel they sell you will be out of a newer wreck. You can always check the DOT number on the tire and tell them you won't take one that's more than so-so many years old. Preferably 5 years old or younger, definitely not 15 years old. And again, you might even be able to pick between aluminum or steel wheels (some lux cars got aluminum wheel spares). They want to sell you junk not garbage...

The insight here is that GM is, on balance, a good company that makes good cars -- but they don't, on balance, have a lot of imagination or variety when it comes to many hard parts including these spares. Odds are that if you try you should be able to snag a good one from a junkyard.



Albertj

Still looking - apparently I am not going to find one locally without a prohibitive amount of leg work. Time is money . . .

LARRY70GS wrote:

Jack,
How about this?

http://www.autopartsfair.com/buick-usedparts/riviera-1998-wheel.html?fit_notes=3efb2c4f607885203ae7e7c8f240c1d0&seq_num=1

How can you tell how old these are?

Be nice if they'd say what car the tire came out of.

Tires are date coded in the rubber sidewall. I think donuts are the same - check yours to verify. The number looks like a VIN, but shorter.

Before January 1st 2000, the last 3 digits of a DOT number represented the week (2 digits) and the year (1 digit) of production. For example, if the last three digits are 063, the tire was produced in the 6th week of 1993.

After January 1, 2000 have a 4-digit date code at the end of the DOT number. The first 2 digits represent the week of production and the final 2 digits represent the last 2 digits of the year of production. For example, in the picture the 4104 indicates that this tire was manufactured on the 41stweek of 2004.

I ended up buying a used 7 spoke chrome rim and put together a full sized spare.  Here's a couple things I learned -

The full size tire does not fit in the spare tire well.  

Mounting tire weights on the inside does not mean they are glued inside the rim.  They are clipped onto the inside lip of the rim, just like they are clipped onto the outside of the rim.  It's exactly the same, except on the inside.  

I can't figure out why tire weights would ever be put on the outside of the rim, especially on chrome, which does get damaged by the clip.  Perhaps someone can explain it to me.  It looks to me like sheer incompetence, and a tire place that does it owes the customer a new set of rims.

Jack the R wrote:

I can't figure out why tire weights would ever be put on the outside of the rim, especially on chrome, which does get damaged by the clip.  Perhaps someone can explain it to me.  It looks to me like sheer incompetence, and a tire place that does it owes the customer a new set of rims.

If the tire was made with a lip there, it's "ok" to put weights on it. If it's a wheel with a smoothed lip then sticky weights are required. Hammer on weights are cheaper and faster than sticky weights, so unless you specify otherwise weights will be attached to the lip that GM put there to hold weights on.

deekster_caddy wrote:

If the tire was made with a lip there,

Do you mean the tire or the rim?

If you mean the rim, how many rims don't have a lip on the inside? I don't know, but I'd guess nearly all do. Am I wrong?

IMO if you want to treat the customer right you should automatically put the wheel weights on the inside of the rim on chrome rims, whichever kind of weight needs to be used. I couldn't care less whether it is faster or cheaper for a guy getting a few bucks an hour to put the weights on the outside, and I don't think I should have to tell him how to do his job to keep him from damaging rims that will take a few hundred dollars to replace. My rims are relatively cheap too. Do they pull this same crap on expensive rims? I can't believe this isn't common sense, one of the first things they drill into a new hire's head - "The customer has these nice rims because they care about looking good. He doesn't want to see weights on his nice rims. He doesn't want to see scars on his nice rims. He isn't paying to have to explain the obvious to you." Next I'll be having to explain the concept of oil weights, or the difference in engine fluids.

If the wheel has a lip on it, and the manufacturer put the weights on the lip from the factory, chrome or not, that's where tire installers will put the weights. Up until '15 (new body), all the GM trucks with the big fancy 20"-22" chrome wheels had the weights on the outside....because that's where GM put them. The new style wheels don't have the lip, so they're all sticky weights. Only by request will the bang-on weights be replaced with sticky weights.

The chrome Riv wheels are the same way. They have a lip, and GM put the weights on the outside....

Incompetence is putting the sticky weights on the outside of the spokes because you have no clue what you're doing lol. I've seen it done.

Sounds like GM needs to get its act together. People today are all about rims. I can't imagine anyone is going to be happy seeing their new dubs cluttered up with ugly lead weights.

Why did GM take the lip off the inside of the truck rims? Does the weight savings add .0000075 miles per gallon?

Jack the R wrote:

deekster_caddy wrote:

If the tire was made with a lip there,

Do you mean the tire or the rim?

If you mean the rim, how many rims don't have a lip on the inside?  I don't know, but I'd guess nearly all do.  Am I wrong?

Sorry, yes I meant the rim. How many have a lip on the inside? Most, but not all. How many rims have a lip on the outside? Most, a lot more with OEM wheels than aftermarket wheels - the OEM is more concerned about ride quality/NVH, the aftermarket is more about looks. There's static balancing and dynamic balancing. Static balancing just places the weights on one side, but can result in a funny ride. Dynamic puts weights on the inside and outside of the rim, giving an overall better balance. For the best ride, you want the weights as far out as you can, so they have the most effect (you need less weight that way). If a rim doesn't have an outer lip, then they can put sticky weights on the inside if the rim just behind the outer spokes. But I really don't like sticky weights because when they are removed, techs never remove all of the adhesive or backing from the old weights, if they remove the old weights at all. or if they do they gouge the crap out of the wheel finish.

So the ideal is to have the wheel weights on the outer lips of the bead, for NVH, which is what most customers "care about". If you are concerned about looks, tell the shop to static balance only on the inside, that's up to you to specify though.

I didn't notice any improvement in NVH or ride quality with the weights on the outside of the rims.

For the sake of argument, static and dynamic wheel balancing has nothing to do with where or how the weights are placed. It's a very common misconception......

Balancing a wheel is balancing a wheel, no matter where or how many weights. It's all just a variation of the balancing program on the machine. Static balancing does not use a rotating machine to balance the wheel. Instead , it uses "gravity" to rotate the tire to the heavy spot. Remember the old days of using a yellow wax crayon to mark high/heavy spots? That's static balancing. It's the same way I balance my RC truck tires.

Dynamic balance uses a machine.....

If done right, you can properly balance any wheel with sticky weights. It just takes more weight to balance the wheel assembly because you're closer to the center of the wheel. The farther out you go, the less weight and the more precise the balance.