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Amphibious HEMTT

So I got a piece of 1/2” and trimmed it round on the lathe.

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Question for those that know or care, how would you mount the wheel? Obviously, I will bore out the center and drill the Ford lug pattern on this plate. But I’m not sure how I want to attach it to the wheel. I could bolt it to the lug pattern on the wheel with 1” bolts. I could also make bushings for the holes to bring them down to a more reasonable 1/2”. Or I could drill new holes in between those holes at what ever size I want. It’s just that 1” seem ridicules.
 
ThePanzerFuhrer said:
How are you centering it. Lug centric or hub centric?
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The Ford pattern is hub centric. I don’t know what the HEMTT wheel is. I will make the center hole very precision, not sure about the adapter to wheel. Anybody know the pattern for the HEMTT. It appears to be about 13 1/4”. Maybe 350 mm?

Edit, I searched and they say 11 1/4”. I guess I need to measure again.

Second edit, it is 11 1/4”.
 
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I drilled the Ford lug pattern.

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I had a wheel spacer for Ford and checked that it fit. It fits tight because the holes are not a metric size.

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I thought I would check everything again before I drill the HEMTT pattern. So I’m getting Bideneze. When I first measured the pattern, I thought it was over 13”. After searching on the web, I found that it should be 11 and a 1/4”. I went out and measured that. Now during my double check, I’m getting 13 again. There’s no way to get eleven.

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Back to the net and I find I don’t have a HEMTT wheel. I have a MRAP wheel and it has a 335 mm lug pattern. (About 13”) I still don’t know how I got 11 1/4”. I guess that confirmation bias. The holes seem to measure exactly 1”. Wonder why that is not metric.
 
I got the holes drilled for the MRAP wheel. Well, I got 6 of the 10 drilled. (The mill doesn’t have enough travel)

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I was able to turn the disc and drill the other holes. I bolted the wheel spacer on and bored a hole in the center.

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I really f*cked this up. First, when I went to get the metal, I thought I needed 18”. When I got home, I realized I only needed 15” . Till I got done cutting it down, I some how had 14 3/4”. That would have been fine, but I somehow screwed up these hole patterns. The two patterns are correct to each other, but they are both off center of the disc. I can (and probably will) take a skim off the outer diameter and make it true, but of course then it will even be smaller than 14 3/4”. If I use 1” bolts, the edge thickness is going to be thin. Good thing this is a spare tire.
 
WaterH said:
I got the holes drilled for the MRAP wheel. Well, I got 6 of the 10 drilled. (The mill doesn’t have enough travel)

IMG_1583.jpeg


I was able to turn the disc and drill the other holes. I bolted the wheel spacer on and bored a hole in the center.

IMG_1584.jpeg


I really f*cked this up. First, when I went to get the metal, I thought I needed 18”. When I got home, I realized I only needed 15” . Till I got done cutting it down, I some how had 14 3/4”. That would have been fine, but I somehow screwed up these hole patterns. The two patterns are correct to each other, but they are both off center of the disc. I can (and probably will) take a skim off the outer diameter and make it true, but of course then it will even be smaller than 14 3/4”. If I use 1” bolts, the edge thickness is going to be thin. Good thing this is a spare tire.
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1-1/2× the diameter of the hole for edge distance is typical minimum standard.
 
2big bronco said:
1-1/2× the diameter of the hole for edge distance is typical minimum standard.
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If I used 1” bolts, I could never get that. Of course, if you look at the wheel, they didn’t have that either. I’m leaning towards threaded bushing to go in the holes. Then I would use a 1/2” bolt. I’m still maching the center hole for the hub. This is just a scrap piece of steel I got from the scrap yard, but it appears to be some what hard. Have ing trouble cutting it.
 
So I made two threaded bushings that allow me to use 1/2” bolts. You can see i cut some flats to grab with a wrench. Not sure if I need them or if they make the flange weaker.

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Mounted the adapter to the wheel with the two bushings.

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Looks like it will work. The only issue is I need to drill a hole for the shader if I mount the adapter on the other side.

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I believe the adapter needs to be on this side to center the tire in my fender. Those bushings are kind of a pain to make , but if I had known about this wheel when I built the truck, I probably would have them all around.
 
So back on the spare wheel/tire. Spent some quality time on the lathe with the new mild steel shaft.

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Nice when a plan comes together. This was the end of the material. (Not much waste)

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It when pretty good. Even the tap ran right through that stuff without having to back it up. So the rest of the job is going to go good………right?

Well, I didn’t just run those all off in one clip. I took breaks and worked on some other parts of the job. First I pulled one of my wheels off to try the spare with only a few bolts in place. I can see I can’t use the ceramic balancers with this flat adapter.

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No biggy, I don’t think they work anyways. Next I compared tires mounted on different wheels.

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The wheel on the left is 14” wide. The military wheel is 10”. You can see how the wide wheel has more bulge to the sidewall. Here’s the weird thing. I would think the wide wheel would make the tire shorter. Doesn’t appear that way.

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Anyways, I figure the adapter needs to be on the inside of the wheel to make the tires sit correctly in my wheel wells. But I can’t put the adapter inside until I drill a hole for the shader valve. Since I had the adapter mounted on the wrong side with a few bolts, I thought I would just try it on the truck. Nothing could go wrong? Right?

I mounted it and began tightening the lugs. I turned the tire and heard a ground sound. Hmmm. Took a look behind and found the big bolts scraping the brake caliper.

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Not so good. So I started removing the lugs again. I spun the tire just a little to get at another lug and pow! Air started hissing. I found out the big bolts weren’t scraping, it was the shader valve. Fortunately, it didn’t just scrape, it broke right off.

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I guess it is time to drill a hole for the shader. Conveniently, the military wheel had a hole opposite the shader. I guess for ballance. It was nice because I could hold the adapter up and scribe a location through that hole. I drilled two holes 180 degrees apart for balance and either one could go over the shrader. Or so I thought.

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You can see how I got the hole perfect with the wheel hole. But when I went to the other side to install a shrader….

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Oh well, nothing a cutoff wheel won’t fix.

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Continued…..
 
So again, I mounted the wheel on the truck. No scraping this time. I don’t know if you can see the shrader, but it has about an inch clearance. BTW, it was lucky as hell that I had shrader that fit in that wheel.

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The tire seems to line up correct with the side of the truck.

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About the only difference is the lack of sidewall bulge.

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The only thing left is paint.

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ThePanzerFuhrer said:
Here is a great start for v2.0.

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We need a good fly and drive back thread. Haven’t had one in a while.
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That is cool. I think real MRAPs are fuggly. I could really make that cool looking. Need high steer on it.
 
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