WARNING: Original hubcentric M416 wheels and powder coating

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Calaski8123
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WARNING: Original hubcentric M416 wheels and powder coating

Post by Calaski8123 » Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:05 pm

Little public service announcement for anyone with the original M416 hubcentric wheels and they're getting them powder coated... They have EXTREMELY tight tolerances.

I didn't know this would be a problem. I got the wheels powder coated black and I painted my axle and hub with POR15 and black Rust-Oleum. Got Falken Wildpeaks mounted the beautiful wheels and they look great.

Got out of work early today so I decided to put the axle back into the trailer. Got it bolted up to the leaf springs and went to go put the wheels on to get it rolling around under its own weight. Slap the wheels on and tightened up the lug nuts but the wheel would not sit flush against the Hub. It was totally off axis and I couldn't figure out why until I realized the wheel was not fully seating around the Hub. I took the layer of POR15 and paint off the hub first but it still would not seat.

Unfortunately I had to take a Dremel sander to the inside rim of the wheel and take off the powder coating down to bare metal. Even then I really couldn't get it to seat on its own, had a crank down on the lug nuts to get it to fully seat correctly. Sucks because my beautiful Wheels now are all marred up. Took me two and a half hours to get the wheels mounted on to the hubs. It was too dark to really see what the total damage was I'll have to check tomorrow and see what I can touch up with some paint to just keep it from rusting.

Anyway I'm not sure what the powder coater can do but those tolerances are tight tight tight. So if you're considering getting those rims powder coated take that into consideration before you go.

That said I really like the original wheels. I mounted 215/85/16's on them and they look fantastic.

I read a bunch of people on this forum and others that powder coated the original rims and nobody mentioned this.

Hopefully somebody else can avoid my mistakes.


mdainsd
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Re: WARNING: Original hubcentric M416 wheels and powder coating

Post by mdainsd » Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:50 am

That is an unfortunate downside to powder coating. Anything at tolerance is at risk. Getting a frame back all pretty and finished just to have to break out a drill and take all the powder coating out of the mounting holes is a definite bummer.

But P/C can be masked. There are elastic plugs to block holes and aluminum tape for surfaces.
52 M38 2X, '52 M37, '44 WC51, '42 WC 56/57, '50 CJ-V35(U), '42 GPW, '44 M3A1 Scout Car, 2010 M-Gator

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