John Wilson

More excellent information -- thank you! The existing wheels are unfortunately made out of dry leaves at this point, so I doubt they can be saved (certainly not by my lousy welding skills even with inner tubes). Good to know about what wheels interchange -- I was having no luck looking for aftermarket stuff that admits to fitting a 1930s Chevy. The tires are definitely 6.00-16 and that's a good point about ag tires -- the front ones on my tractor (1949 8N) are also 6.00-16 so they'd match, and the bolt pattern on its wheels looks the same too (6 x 5.5?), but they're dished and I doubt that style would fit the large Chevy drums. So truck wheels it is. Anyway I'll hope for the best with the bearings. I lugged the rear end back to the house today and put it on jackstands and amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly to people who know 1930 GM stuff, the prop shaft does still turn even after the spline end was underground for who knows how many years. So nothing's seized up, but I'll see how rumbly it all is once I get the tires off (what little the squirrels/porcupines/etc. left behind of them) and get some fresh oil inside everything.

I thought what was left of the tires said 6.00 x 16 on them but I stupidly didn't take a picture, or bring a tape measure and now it's dark and rainy. I sort of expect to find wheel cylinders and it's just that the fittings/lines have rusted away (and those cables are for the handbrake), but the backing plates are in such surprisingly good shape that it's hard to see where the rusty stumps would hide. Do I not want to buy bearings just because they cost more than wheels/tires/tubes combined, or for some other even better reason? I'm not looking to go crazy with restoration here, but it seems like a shame to haul it to the scrap yard after it's survived this long, and I could definitely use a wagon for my tractor. So I'd like to pop things open and see how bad it is. The wheels both do turn but I haven't freed it up enough to tell if they'll turn in the same direction. The front end of the prop shaft was buried, with a ~200 lb rock on top of it (collapsing stone wall), so it'd be weird if it weren't rusted up solid. But the rest of it is nowhere near as rusty as it should be so who knows. It may be magic. My '94 Civic is in worse shape, and I had a '67 VW bus which had an unfamiliar cat in it one morning -- that's how bad the floors were. So if this thing wants to live, at all, I want to let it! Anyway, thanks!!

Ooh! All I've found from that so far is a 1937 Chevy mini-documentary on diffs called "Around the Corner" but the brief shot of the diff cover (on some presumably recent-ish model of the time) is a dead ringer for mine so I'll bet you're right. Thanks! The googling continues ...

Looks like it was most recently a trailer, but the wooden parts melted away, yet the metal looks surprisingly intact. Maybe Nash/AMC? Ten bolts, totally round diff cover except for two lumps at the edges (7:00 and 11:00) and an oil bung, no tags or stamps visible amid the rust but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Cable-operated brakes. I can't find any pictures online that exactly match. I forgot to bring a tape measure on my latest trip to visit it, but it looks weirdly narrow to me, especially for something with six-lug wheels (16" I think). It may want to be a trailer again (for a tractor at least -- 10 MPH max) but I'd still need to know what car's bearings/etc. to buy. Any ideas? Thanks!