12 Bolt wheel centering washers

[Hmmv4me]

Hi all, I picked up a set of old style 12 bolt wheels with some new tires on them. I wanted to flip a couple of tires to match the tread direction so I took a couple apart. After I was done putting them together, I stuck them on the balancer and noticed the back wheel half was out of center. After some research, I found out about the centering washers for those wheels. All of the threads I found were saying you could pick them up for less than a buck each so I was going to by 24 of them for the wheels. I guess these were older threads that I was reading because everybody that I could find that was selling them were asking $11 to $14 per washer. I didn't really want to spend $300 on an old set of wheels so I went to the local hardware store and found some steel sleeves that fit snug on the bolt, ground the edge a bit to fit into the bolt hole on the front half of the rim, 3 of them at 120 degrees worked well. The question is, will the wheel halves slip out of center after they have been torqued? Do those centering washers need to be left in place to prevent the wheel halves from moving?

 

[Retiredwarhorses]

Govt didn’t use centering washers..that’s an H1 Hummer thing.
also...the tires are Radial Non-directional and are actually staggered from the factory, so unless you did this for just
Looks, it serves no purpose.

 

[Hmmv4me]

So they do not need to stay in place? The rim halves won't move right? Anyway, I realize the tires aren't directional, I just like the way the MT's look with the center arrows pointing the same direction.

 

[papakb]

There's no need to use the centering washers on all of the wheel bolts. If you put 4 of then on a 24 bolt wheel they'll do the job just as well as if you put 24 of them on it. Space them out every 6 lugs and you'll be fine.

 

[Hmmv4me]

There's no need to use the centering washers on all of the wheel bolts. If you put 4 of then on a 24 bolt wheel they'll do the job just as well as if you put 24 of them on it. Space them out every 6 lugs and you'll be fine.

Thanks, I was only going to use 3 per wheel though. I have 8 wheels that I was going to recenter.