Scratchbuilt Kustom Lancer Wheelcover

[Chad Shapiro]

Here is a little project that me and Jeff Sauber have been working on. He needed a better detailed Dodge Lancer style wheelcover than the aftermarket or kits offer, so I offered to do the machine work for it.

I drew the plans and scaled them down from an actual wheel cover, and turned them from aluminum, and the bars were done in plastic by Jeff. The photoetch center screen is a detail master speaker cover that I glued to a piece of brass stock, and cut down to diameter and drilled the center. Jeff also did a stock style center bar piece, without the bullet in the center.

The wheel is a 2 piece unit that snaps together, with a recess in the front to accept the wheel cover, but shows the detail of the outer wheel rim normaly seen in 1:1. its very hard to see the detail of the rim, as its turned in acrylic, but it is very delicate and true to scale.

This item will soon be available from a highly regarded resin caster (as of now unamed, but if you know who the best in the business is, you know who it is). The kit will included the wheel cover, both the Kustom bullet center cross bar, as well as the stock cross bar, and the 2 piece wheel rims (which have rim detail on both halves, and work with the Relicas & Miniatures finned buick drum brkes). The wheels are sized to fit the new wide white wall bias ply tires that I recently patterned for RMCoM, and are available now.

[BigPoppa]

nice! Sign me up. Will they fit any other tire? My favorite kit supplied tire is the whitewalls from R/M

[Mr. Metallic]

Very nice. Can't wait!!!

[Chad Shapiro]

  BigPoppa said:

nice! Sign me up. Will they fit any other tire? My favorite kit supplied tire is the whitewalls from R/M

They were patterned to fit that whitewall, which is based off of an AMT tire I think. The wheel should be easily made to work with most any tire by either taking some material ut of the inside of a smaller tire, or adding some material to the inside of the tire for nug fit. You could also use just the wheelcover part, but the supplied wheel will of course make a system that assembles with no headaches.

I think the RM tires have a slightly smaller opening, so a quick pass with an exact knife to shave off some material would do the job.

[Tom Kren]

Will it be ALL resin or both resin and turnned aluminum?I can use some!

[Chad Shapiro]

  Tom Kren said:

Will it be ALL resin or both resin and turnned aluminum?I can use some!

It will be all resin, but the quality of the resin parts will be high, so that they can be sent right to the chromer with no prep work.

[cruz]

Hey Chad, this is what you should be doing, showing us how magical that lathe is man, I have been following the progress of this build and it's definitely interesting...... :wink: Together with that "Alien" called Jeff you guys will go far

[Irvin Arter Jr.]

Great job Chad, I talked to Jeff at Toledo about them. I will be getting a few sets for sure!