Disk Wheels

Unknown

Last week there was some discussion about the possibility of using disk

wheels on our Super Six dream racing cars. This makes a certain amount of

sense if you can find a usable set of disk wheels. Back in the twenties, some

makes of cars were commonly sold with them, Packard and Nash come to mind

right now.

A few problems present themselves. First, these wheels are of the

demountable rim type, hardly very racy looking. Custom hubs would have to be

made to mate them with the Hudson axles. I have no idea how much work might

be involved. Then you have the difficulty of locating a usable set.

Demountable rims for a Nash are probably about as common as demountable rims

for a '26 Hudson.

An interesting side note about disk wheels. Two or three weeks ago I

followed a fellow from our local Orange County Model T Club on tour. During

one of the stops, I complemented him about finally having a T with straight

wheels as there was no wobble at all, the only T I can remember that actually

drives straight. He had recently fitted a set of accessory disk wheels

located at a swap and they looked pretty sharp.

The problem was that the car jumped around on the freeway worse than ever

before even though the wheels ran true. The wheels WERE running straight, I

saw that when driving behind in my Caddie. Further, the instability seemed to

be related to gust loads, such as when being passed by a truck. After kicking

this around awhile, we tentatively decided that the wheels were acting like

an aerofoil at speed. Ts have very quick steering, and even a tiny amount of

laxity in the joints will allow movement. While this is not a problem at 25

mph, at 50 mph the wheel has a considerable amount of sail area that trys to

wrestle the steering mechanism awy from it's intended path. The wood wheels

avoid this problem by not having any significant wing area. To make the

matter even worse, the aerodynamically steerable parts, the wheels, were in

front being a car, rather than in back like an aeroplane, a naturally

unstable position. Every gust was trying to make the car turn around.

Our Hudsons have some advantages the poor T doesn't have. For one thing,

Hudsons have a real steering box rather than the go cart type steering. Pure

weight would also tend to minimize this effect. With heavier tires and

wheels, we should have more gyroscopic stability for the gust loads to work

against. On the other hand, our Hudson racer will be doing twice what the

fastest T could hope to do, and that means gust far higher forces loads to

fight.

I don't think this problem would stop me, but it might encourage extra

attention to the tightness of the steering connections.



Paul O'Neil, Hudson29@aol.com

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