Has anyone ever made concrete wheel weights?
- Thread starter _floater_
- Start date
I was actually thinking about adding used wheel weights. I did something similar when I fabricated a bulb for a raising keel on one of my many sailboats.
The idea was to lay my wheel on it's side and cover it with a couple layers of saran wrap, then put some long bolts through my mounting holes, nutted from both sides with lots of bolt sticking out the outside of the rim. Tape some plastic caps over the lug nuts and valve stem and sit a 6" long piece of 12" diameter sonotube on top of the rim then pour with cement, tossing in wheel weights as I go. I figure once cured, it's just a matter of spinning the nuts off the back of the rim and the weight should come right off for when I don't want them on.
I think I'll give it a go in the spring. Too damn cold now.
If one could get their hands on a lot of old ball bearings. Like marble sized or bigger that would make a nice heavy weight. Using them in concrete
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Thinking about how I had done mine. I l lined the rim with plastic and put a circle cutout down on the rim center. A piece of pipe for the bolts. But what I didn't think of was with the concrete so tight to the rim it held moisture and really rusted.... And got tight and didn't want come off again. If I would make some again, I would try to get a small gap to avoid that.
I wonder how hard it would be to drill through a brake rotor...I never tried
I'd imagine you'd need a stellite drill.
I think ball bearing would almost beg for the cement to let go of them. Maybe not.
Used carbide inserts from a machine shop would be ideal, but most shops recycle them now because they can fetch $15/lb.
Most are cast steel and easy to drill through! Depends on how hot they may have gotten!
Many years ago I went to a Junk yard that allowed people to pull their own parts and made a deal to wonder around and pick up nuts bolts and washers that were left lying around loose. I took 2 five gallon buckets and filled them with all I could carry. I think they charged me $3 per bucket. That is cheep weight. But it is time consuming to walk around and pick them up. Don
Here's what I have done with easy to find cheap barbell weights. I took a piece of 1/2 flat bar stock cut to length to fit the inside diameter of the wheel, mark the existing holes in the rim and mark the center of the flat bar. The outer 2 holes are drilled for the largest bolt that can fit through the existing holes in the rim. The center hole is drilled 15/16 or 1" for a piece of 1" round stock, length is determined by the amount of weight plates you want to use plus a bit more to add a lynch pin hole. Weld the round to the flat and bolt it on. I run 5 10lb weights per wheel with the setup. Its easy to slide the weights off when not needed and the holder can stay on.
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Steel or cast iron barbell weights are as rare as garden tractor wheel weights around here both have been made of plastic and sand or concrete for 50 or 60 years. Don
Looks like that works great JS! I have been meaning to build something like that for years! I've got all the junk to do it just when I have time I forget, then when I remember I don't have time---LOL!
DAC
