Then in a mad notion a few weeks back i bought these :
18x8.25J Magnesium Speedline Centre lockers from a BTCC car of some description.
Worth noting at this point that i'm a mechanical design engineer by trade, so I had a fair notion I could make an adapter to make them fit.
Also bought a set of THS engine mounts :
Will hopefully get them in soon, MOT is up in January, so maybe afer then.
Anyway, on to the adpaters.
Got the adapters designed up. Decided in the end, against my own desire, to go with a single piece adapter with less drive pegs than the wheel is made for that aren't equi-spaced. Certainty not my preferred option by a long shot, but after the front trial fit I decided it's better going with something that will more than likely work as opposed to an over engineered solution that would definitely be strong enough, but leave me having to pull arches etc.
My preferred option was to get as many drive pegs on as possible to a separate plate that slide over the base plate that would bolt to the hub. This would've meant being able to use as many of the 12 sockets the wheel had for drive pegs that I wanted. But his wasn't going to work, as between hub bolts and pegs, the minimum thickness for an adapter like that would been about 25-30mm.
So I went back to the single piece adapter, where the drive pegs, which are on a PCD of 110, would go between the 5x112 PCD for mounting to the hub. This meant the most pegs I could fit in was 5. In theory its no different to a normal 5 stud adapter, but I would've liked more.
The adapter:
The hub bolt, high tensile 12.9 grade :
Another wee thought I had with these was that I could basically make the wheel a giant snap ring for the hub bolts :
With the bolt head being the above, I made the counter bore for them to sit into on the adapter 13.5mm. When the time comes to make the adapters, I'll have the heads of the bolts lathed down to the same, so that the rear face of the wheel is a machine fit against the tightened bolts, thus meaning that the hubs bolts, providing the centre nut doesn't loosen, cannot come loose as the can't go anywhere. Just for a bit of peace of mind! The final depth for the front adapters ended up being a very workable 18.5mm with an 80mm long centre thread for the lock nut.
Drawings are away for the first mild steel prototype to be made. I'm making the proper ones out of 6061-T4 aluminium, which would be horrendously expensive stuff to get wrong, so a few quid spent on a rough prototype will be worth it in the end.
That pretty much brings me up to date, massive apologies for the stupid amount of pics. Will keep all updated properly from here on in.
Cheers for reading,
Conor
