how late was wood spoke wheels a option?

[Brad in Wisconsin]

Saw this Studebaker the other day and figured the wood spoke wheels were an option. is it a 1932? On the way home, my buds and I were talking about how late were wood spoke wheels offer as a option on other makes of cars. does anyone know? I think Chevrolet had as an option in 31?

[ply33]

Wood spoke wheels were available for Plymouth in 1933. Some have told me that they were also available in 1934 but my parts books do not show that.

[Graham Man]

1933 was the last year for Graham, and the second year for 15 inch disk wheels (what a dumb idea).

[keiser31]

I believe that all of the MoPar products used them through 1933.

[dodgedh2]

I'd like to add......wood wheels were standard equipment on many cars and trucks. Wire, disc, and other steel wheels were optional equipment.

[W_Higgins]

The 1936 Packard V-12 shown below at Hershey in 2010 had wood wheels and it is a pretty nifty unrestored example. H.F. duPont purchased new a Cadillac (I can't remember the exact year, but want to say it was a V-16) and he specified wood wheels at a time well after they were no longer popular. There are letters of his correspondence with GM complaining of wheel problems when the car was still new. A car that big just wasn't meant for wheels like that:

In this photo with the sidemount you can just barely see the spokes. I might have more photos saved elsewhere. At the time I took these it was difficult getting decent shots as so many people were swarming around it.

Edited January 5, 2011 by W_Higgins (see edit history)

[Bill Harmatuk]

Am I dreaming or what.??

Seems to me that I can remember an advertisement in a Car Craft or some other car magazine were someone was making a wheel with wooden spokes and chrome rim. It was about the same time they started making wire spoked mag wheels. About 1977. I think the magazine had an article on the Clenet' in it. The Clenet' looked like a Cord but was made from a MGB body with huge hood and fenders. I remember it had 3 windshield wipers. A guy down the street had one when I was a kid.

Gonna have to dig in my tupperware tubs in the garage. Hmmm.

Bill H

[keiser31]

Am I dreaming or what.??

Seems to me that I can remember an advertisement in a Car Craft or some other car magazine were someone was making a wheel with wooden spokes and chrome rim. It was about the same time they started making wire spoked mag wheels. About 1977. I think the magazine had an article on the Clenet' in it. The Clenet' looked like a Cord but was made from a MGB body with huge hood and fenders. I remember it had 3 windshield wipers. A guy down the street had one when I was a kid.

Gonna have to dig in my tupperware tubs in the garage. Hmmm.

Bill H

I remember it, Bill.

[trimacar]

Interesting question. As cars increased in weight and horsepower, wood wheels intuitively seemed a poor choice.

However, if you look at the later 32-33 wood wheels available, the hubs were large and the rims were getting smaller. Thus, wood was not a bad option.

A basic primer on wheels, not to offend those who know.

Wire wheels are a suspended load. That is, the weight of the car is suspended from the wires that are above the hub. Think of it as a suspension bridge, but rotating. As the wheel turns, the load transfers to the next wires. There is basically no load on the lower wires, think about it, a wire is great in tension but very poor in compression. One advantage of wire wheels, in the angled configuration of the assembly, is that they can transfer torque with some effectiveness.

Now, wood wheels. They are entirely in compression, with the lower spokes carrying the load. Wood is great in compression, and fine in suspension (or tension, as referenced above). The difference is that there's very little suspension, as to have that with wood would mean an absolute "fixed" end, and that's not the case with wood wheels.

Also, wood wheels don't handle torque nor side load effectively, but that's also a function of spoke cross section and length. In early cars, that wasn't a huge problem, low power, low speed. As it all increased, the distance between hub and rim on a wood wheel had to decrease, to compensate. In addition, the size of the spoke had to increase. Any short tour of a car show will see that progression, from spindly Model T spokes to thick chunks of wood on Classics.

I digress, but once I was driving my then-owned 1909 Sears AutoBuggy on a tour. Came to an intersection with a cop directing traffic, for some reason had to put the tiller steering very hard to port, or maybe starboard, no water in my veins. The Sears had long, long, wood spokes. Someone following me was bug eyed, he told me that the hub of the wheel moved out from the centerline of the rim by a HUGE amount, the thought the wheel would come apart. Thus, a practical demonstration of not taking side load.

I believe that by 33 or 34, the engineering development of car power and handling exceeded the capability of even a well engineered wood spoke wheel.

In my humble opinion, of course .....

[Dave@Moon]

...About 1977. I think the magazine had an article on the Clenet' in it. The Clenet' looked like a Cord but was made from a MGB body with huge hood and fenders. I remember it had 3 windshield wipers. A guy down the street had one when I was a kid.

The Clenet was based on the MG Midget, not the MGB. The windshield and wipers were retained from the MG during manufacture.

[Earl B.]

Pretty good chances those artillery wheels in post six on that Packard V-12 are metal, not wood...B

[Bill Harmatuk]

Thats what I was thinking, Packard32.

I would bet the Packard wheels are metal spoked.

Good topic.

Bill H

[trimacar]

OK so I have to put my couple of Lincoln coins on this again..

Won't go into the whole story, but it involved a 1906 Autocar, a collection of cars bought, and Ralph Stein.

Had a chance to buy a 1906 Autocar, nice, nice restoration to 1970's standards. Tracked down and called Mr. Stein (author of a few great books on early cars, to you newbies, find the books, buy, read). He said that the price was high (and it was). In the conversation, he offered me the Welch, in the book. High price, but man, what I missed.

OK, the point is, this 1906 Autocar had metal wheels, made to look like wooden spokes. The spokes were hollow formings.

One has to remember that, as cars were becoming popular, the reference point was wagons and carriages. So, to make a metal wheel that appeared to be wooden spokes was not that far fetched.

[Rusty_OToole]

The flexibility of the wood spoke wheels was a designed in feature, and considered desirable in the teens and twenties.

I have seen a picture taken about 1907, of a heavily laden touring car on a so called road covered with rocks the size of your head. The rear wheels were wedged between 2 rocks and the bottom of the wheels must have been a foot closer together than the top in other words the top bent out 3" on each side and the bottom bent in.

They got the car out with jacks and pry bars, the wheels sprang back and were good as new.

You could not get away with that on wire spoke wheels. I remember another account of a cross country trip in a 1920 Oldsmobile with wire wheels. The author had to replace broken spokes nearly every day. This was on a botanizing expedition in the western US, rough roads and the car heavily loaded with passengers and baggage.

Wooden wheels were tough and resilient, and absorbed noise and vibration. The first steel disc wheels in the 20s were thought to make more noise, and give a rougher ride than wooden wheels.

In those days wooden wheels were more practical, wire wheels and disc wheels were just something fancy. Wire wheels could be trued up better for racing but for ordinary road speeds, wood was better.

In the twenties and earlier, American bicycles even came with wooden wheel rims. They were tough and resilient and would take a beating and bounce back. On the rough gravel roads of those days, a metal rim would get dented or bent. The wooden rim was also easier on tires. I expect the wood spoke wheels on cars were easier on tires too.

By the early thirties, with the smaller wheels then in vogue, the wood spokes were only a few inches long. Also, roads were better, tires were better, and road speeds higher. Steel wheels were cheaper to make and wood wheels no longer had any advantage.

From the perspective of today it is hard to see any advantage to wooden wheels at all, but before 1925 or so they saw things differently.

Or as Franklin used to ask, would you rather break rocks with a wooden handle hammer or a steel handle hammer?

Edited January 6, 2011 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[HarryJ]

Great question!..........I am really interested in this answer..........I think Packard32 is right on the 36 Packard....I'm beating '33,,,,'34,,,for the last year.

[Rusty_OToole]

Should also point out that wood dries out and loses its flexibility over time. A 100 year old wooden wheel is a lot weaker than a brand new one.

Also wooden wheels were made of second growth hickory the same as axe handles and sledge hammer handles. Test a wooden sledge hammer handle vs a steel tube of the same diameter, you may be surprised which is stronger.

[Rusty_OToole]

After wooden wheels went out of use car makers had to add a lot of rubber body mounts, suspension bushings and other rubber parts to make the cars quieter and ride better hmm wonder why?

[Restorer32]

Packard part # 209744- Wheel Assembly (wood) used at least thru 14th Series (1936)

[Restorer32]

The Clenet was based on the MG Midget, not the MGB. The windshield and wipers were retained from the MG during manufacture.

Did the Midget ever have 3 wipers? I know the MGB did at one time but the Midget?

[R Walling]

See http://forums.aaca.org/f169/photo-without-comment-1-4-11-a-295619.html

The devil made me do it.

[W_Higgins]

Pretty good chances those artillery wheels in post six on that Packard V-12 are metal, not wood...B

Packard part # 209744- Wheel Assembly (wood) used at least thru 14th Series (1936)

I'm pretty sure they're wood. The whole reason I thought to go find the photo was I remember the seller telling me they were wood when I was staring at the car thinking they were steel. When I kneeled down for a closer look you could see it through the chips and crazed paint.

If you zoom way in on that sidemount shot look at the profile of the spoke just beyond the pinstripe. It comes to a sharp point. When they started making steel wheels in the likeness of heavy artillery wheels they rounded that part of the spoke so there wouldn't be a stress riser and because it probably made them easier to manufacture.

[Dave@Moon]

Did the Midget ever have 3 wipers? I know the MGB did at one time but the Midget?

Yes (from 1968 on). They're right there in the photo. MG Midget wipers rest to the left, MGB wipers rest to the right.

Edited January 6, 2011 by Dave@Moon
added date (see edit history)

[Restorer32]

Loved my Bug Eyed Sprite as an 18 year old. First car I ever paid for with my own money.

[CarlLaFong]

Clenet looked like a Cord ?!?!? Maybe to Ray Charles it did.

[oldcarfudd]

The November-December 2009 Horseless Carriage Gazette had an article (written by me) about a trip Edsel Ford made from Dearborn to San Francisco in 1915. He had five friends, and they drove in a Model T, a new Cadillac and a new Stutz. Edsel kept a log of the trip, took a potful of pictures, made a scrapbook of all this, and gave a copy of the scrapbook to each participant. I met the son of one of the participants, persuaded him to have some museum-quality CDs made, submitted the article to the Gazette (which printed it over 11 pages), and persuaded him to donate his father's original scrapbook and one CD to the AACA Library. What's relevant to this thread is that Edsel's T started out the trip with accessory wire wheels. One of the pictures shows it with wires on the front, one wooden one on the back, and the other rear being changed. Later pictures show wood wheels all around. The accessory wheels didn't hold up to the roads of the day. Maybe Chris Ritter can be persuaded to chime in and reproduce the relevant pictures.

Gil Fitzhugh, Morristown, NJ