Wheel Balancer Adapter for 5 Wide Wheels

NOTE: If you are fortunate enough to have a local tire shop that has the proper equipment to balance your 5 wide wheels, you may not wish to read further.

Those familiar with my previous posts regarding difficulty finding a shop that could balance my 5 wide wheels will remember that about three weeks ago I posted a query regarding the specs for said wheels. My idea was to have a machine shop make an adapter that would fit my local tire shop

Glad to hear it worked out for you.

Why not just turn down the brake shoe portion of an old drum( i.e. cut it off) and then open up the center to the right I.D. for the balancer. Much cheaper than a custom adapter, no?

Daniel,

Using a brake drum was one thing that was mentioned to me, but after talking with the machinist there were a couple of issues that swayed me toward using new material...
(1) The time spent turning it down and drilling it out would have been equal to or greater than the time spent starting from scratch with new steel and time is where my cost was in the machine shop.
(2) The machinist was concerned about the drum cracking during the machinig process due to the fact that it had been through so many heat cycles from years of being on a car and may have been "brittle."
(3) The face of the drum was much thinner than the steel we used and again, he was afraid of cracking during the drilling out of the certer or even worse, while it was on the balancer with a wheel attached.

In the end, we knew for sure that if we used new steel we wouldn't run into any of those problems, so that's what we did.

Additionally, a couple of people on this board suggested buying a wheel adapter from a VW shop or ordering one from a wholesale tire equipment company. That would have proven to be more expensive than my solution.

So, how much did it end up costing you? As long as you don't mind, I'm sure it depends on the machine shop.

Two hours of shop time and materials came to $115. It was probably a little high, but considering that the flatbed fee to the closest tire shop that could balance th 5 wide wheels (Atlanta - 80 miles away) is $150, it was worth it to me.

Another and much cheaper option is to buy a 5 bolt wheel adapter

Like this:
www.hennessy-ind.com/accessories/pdfs/VW-Porsche%20Adapter%20-%20SALES%20SHEET%204.pdf

And I quote from my 1/8/04 post under the topic "Wheel Specs Needed"..."Hell, somebody out there probably sells them now. This can't be an original idea."

Turns out it wasn't, but I solved my problem which is all I was after.