Unusual Blitz 16" rim.

[lynx42]

Keith Webb visited a few weeks ago and I pointed out to him a pair of unusually wide 16" Blitz rims. Keith put the photo onto Facebook with a query but did not receive much of a response.

Here are a few photos.

Firstly the one Keith took.




The other one.




Hard to measure and photograph but it is about 3" outside.




The unusual wheel outer rim is 3.5" wide.




The standard outer rim is 2" wide




So over to you experts, what is the wide rim measuring about 7.5" across the bead off?

regards Rick.

[Tony Smith]

It looks like 2 "Inner" halves to make one wide rim. On your "the other one" pic, you can see the dimple to make clearance for the valve stem.

Normally the inner half-rim has the 8 joining bolts welded to the hub face of the wheel, but I have seen NOS studs as separate items, and have also seen mistreated rims where the welds have fractured and the bolt come loose, revealing a tapered seat on the inner face. I would guess that at some time these wheels were supplied with the dividing rim bolts loose (I mean not welded to the rim) like Jeep Combat rims, and later practice was to weld the bolts in place, either in production or in service.

It is possible to make up a rim like this with the 16" wheels as the centre disc is flat on both halves. The 20" wheels have a dished centre with a concave and convex pair, and trying to make a wide rim with 2x 20" inner halves creates a large unsupported void that makes the wheel unsafe.

[Howard]

Well, there you go.