A bolt on solution
ok Gents, I took what Kohburn started and ran with it. i have started a design for a 100% bolt on adapter to go from deuce 6 lug to 5-ton 10 lug wheel patterns. it can be done with NO modifications to the truck OR the wheel, clearances get pretty tight, and hardware expenses get pretty outragous for a full set of studs and lug nuts, but with careful clocking of the wheel patterns, you can get counterbores and wheel stud fastener holes to clear each other ok. I quoted material costs up to $109 each NOT including machining, just raw materials (A36 plate). Hardware will run up another 100 per wheel easy for new studs and lug nuts.
Not all the kinks are worked out yet, when they are i will post drawings so yall can make your own if you have better resources than myself, I just dont have 200/wheel to make 6 of these little critters, so I will be modifying my Hemtt wheels unless i can make them cheaper somehow.
1. The adapter must be bolted to the wheel using standard (left and right hand)gr8 hardware and hardened washers rather than wheel lug nuts to keep size down, this means the adapter must be hub-centric rather than lug-centric on the deuce, I do not yet know if this will creat an issue, as the hubs on the deuce were not designed this way, so the tolerance may not be held tight enough.
2. The overlapping nature of the wheel patters create a nice little cavity for mud and crap to get in and corrode the fasteners that are holding the adapter to the hub as the center hole for the hemtt (and all other 10 lug wheels) will hafway cover the deuce pattern. (a solution for this may be to pocket the fastener hole out toward the center of the adapter so crap can fall out)
3. The adapter currently has a 1.5" thickness (to help create clearance for the installation of 15.5/80 R20 tires on HEMTT wheels). this could be reduced by possibly 3/8 inch without issue for other applications. this will also reduce cost.
Questions for the community:
I may be able to reduce a siginficant amount of cost by eliminating the hub pilot for the 10-lug wheel, these wheels are lug centric anyway so I dont see this as a big deal---someone with better big-rig knowledge than myself, please correct me if I am wrong, and explain why.
I can see finished costs ranging up to almost 300/wheel, and i cant imagine that is attractive to anyone? It is not to me.
i can see maybe carrying
one of these spendy critters with you that would act as a "get out of trouble" adapter so you could run a 10 lug spare in an emergency.
thoughts?
cheers all!
Jeep