+2 Alloy Wheel Collar Needed !

[CBUEB1771]

I am thinking of this as the "zombie" thread, one that won't die. Over the weekend I did some research in the garage and found that I was not entirely crazy when I said that the Minilite wheel allowed the knock-on nut to run closer to bottoming on the hub than do the standard steel wheels. I have two sets of Minilites, one set made in the mid-1990s and another about 10 years later. Why two sets? The first set are 13X6 and I thought I had worked out the back space dimension to clear the outboard end of the rear wishbone. Well almost, the 13X6 clear the wishbone but close enough for me to feel uncomfortable about contact between the wheel and wishbone with deflection from loading in use. I bought a set of 13X5 about ten years later and these clear the rear wishbone amply. I compared them yesterday and for the first time I realized that Minilite had changed both the wheel and the thrust ring. Both changes move the knock-on nut away from the wheel. In the photos you will see both wheels, with and without the thrust ring. The earlier wheels have a deep recess for the thrust ring and the "thin" thrust ring that Minilite supplied. The later wheels have a shallow recess for the trust ring and were supplied with the "thick" thrust ring. I then compared how many turns the knock-on nut turns from first engagement on the hub to ending with a light tap of the Thor hammer. Don't fret the absolute number of turns, it is the relative values I was looking for. I used a three-eared nut with "Undo" inscription only.

1. No wheel, run nut to bottoming: 10 1/4 turns
2. Standard steel wheel: 8 1/2 turns
3. Early Minilite, thin ring: 8 3/4 turns
4. Late Minilite, thick ring 7 1/2 turns

The hub pitch is 10 threads per inch. So, the early Minilites are pretty close to what you have with the steel wheel but do run in a bit deeper, in neither case close to bottoming. It therefore seems that the changes in the wheel and thrust ring were made to reduce the number of times the wheel is dinged by the Thor hammer (in years BS, before Sarto). I checked the knock-on nut with my angle gauge and the included angle of the conical seating surface is 90 degrees, the length of the conical surface is 0.50 inches.

[Bigbaldybloke]

Just to add to this, I bought a set of 6 x 14 Minilite around 15 years ago but have only just tried to fit them as the car has been off the road awaiting my retirement to renovate it. I?m now well on with that and tried to fit the wheels and have hit a problem that the spinners screw on just about 10 turns and bottom out but the wheel is not tight, having around 1mm or so to go before the spinner would secure it. I have been supplied a replacement set of the collars that are thicker, but still not thick enough for the wheel to be secure. On the front I could machine off part of the hub so that the spinner could go on further but would be at the limit of the thread on the hub. The rear has a different problem as the webs in the hub protrude further out towards the outside of the car so collar fouls on these before the wheel is clamped tight, after about 9 1/2 turns of the spinner. My collars are much thinner than those shown on the first page of this thread but the ears on the spinner are well clear of the spokes on the Minilite wheel.
It seems there are quite a few versions of the stainless steel collar and so far I haven?t found the right ones, where have people got their various collars from? With the small diameter rear springs i have no clearance problems with 185 section tyres.