five lug hubs?

[itstheshu]

I have a 54 3100 that had factory six lug hubs in the front and a 12 bolt five lug in the rear. I wanted to change the front to five lug so I bought a set of hub off of craigslist. I was told they were off of his 54 when he went to disc brakes and were complete with backing plates and needed hardware. I only used the hub since everything else looked the same. When i went to put my wheels on they did not fit. The hubs have 7/16 studs and you can push the wheel on but they studs are tight to the inside of the hole not allowing the lug nut to go on correctly. Any ideas?

[Dan Bowles]

Different wheels? I've got 54 hubs out here from a Bel Air and I've had 5 of those cars and all of them ran 5 on 4 3/4 rims and I'm pretty sure 7/16" studs.

[raycow]

Back in the day, it was very common to swap 51-54 passenger car hubs and drums if you wanted to run 5 lug wheels. Note that these have a 4.75" bolt circle, not 5" like the later trucks. However, it was also common to swap a passenger car rear end to get better highway gearing, so the bolt pattern did match on front and rear.

Ray

[itstheshu]

I was told they were off a Chevy car but they measure 4 1/2". Did Chevy ever use a 4 1/2" pattern? They have the same seals and bearings that the truck hubs had.

[raycow]

Originally Posted by itstheshu

I was told they were off a Chevy car but they measure 4 1/2". Did Chevy ever use a 4 1/2" pattern? They have the same seals and bearings that the truck hubs had.

Chevy never used 4-1/2'" bolt circle. That was Mopar, Ford, and some of the independents, and none of those ever had a hub that would accept the GM bearings. The Chevy car hub is the only one that uses the right bearings to fit the truck spindle.

When you measure a 5 lug pattern you have to measure from the center of one stud to the point directly across from it on the imaginary circle through the stud centers. If you do that, you will get 4-3/4".

Ray

[itstheshu]

Thank you for all the info. I was measuring wrong and rear end is 5 x 5. Has anyone ever put wheel spacers on the front?

[Clay54]

Originally Posted by itstheshu

Thank you for all the info. I was measuring wrong and rear end is 5 x 5. Has anyone ever put wheel spacers on the front?

When I bought my '54 5 window back in 1968, it had a '49 Cadillac engine, trans, rear axle, front hubs and power steering. I bought it in Robstown, near Corpus Christi. It was built by a guy from Abilene.

The wheel hole pattern was what I call GM big five hole. In the mid '70's, I could not get parts for a several times rebuilt trans so I swapped the engine and trans for a 327 Chevy and a 350 trans. I also had the opportunity to swap the rear end for a Camaro. When this happened, I had GM big five hole on front and GM small 5 hole on the back. Making a long story short, I put spacers on the front to convert from GM big five to GM little five.

I don't think this was the type spacers you were referring to, but they are spacers on the front.

Clay

[itstheshu]

I ended up puting spacers on the front to go from the 5 x 4.75 to 5 x 5.