Rear End Vibration..Wrong Rims

[LJ-TJ]

OK! I'm a dumb bum. One of the problems I've had since Lauren and I have owned our winne is a hum in the rear end as well as the  rear tires seen to have a vertical wobble in them.. for the life of me we couldn't figure it out. Bought new tires didn't work. Thought they didn't balance them right so went to another truck shop and had them balance them. Nup not that. Re did the rear springs and had all the bearings in the rear checked. All checks out A ok. shoot! Took it to a truck shop to have the tranny checked out ( that's another story) and I gets a call from the mechanic I better come down to the shop. He had jacket the rear end up to run the engine to check the tranny and low and behold the tires were running all over the place. Wobbling horizontally, vertically I mean all over the place. We thought the thing had been wrecked before we bought it and all the rims were bent. Not! What nobody had noticed was they were the wrong rims. Somebody had put Ford rims on a Dodge. The dodge rims have small dimples on every other stud hole so they lock into the break drum and also so the Dulles line up and lock into each other. With the Ford rims the stud holes are flat and allow the rims to be mounted in such a way that they don't necessarily line up proper. Just thought this might save somebody else some grief some day.

[Slantsixness]

TJ,
that sucks.

I have seen this before. They're not necessarily "Ford" rims, just not the right rims for your rear axle (or your rear brake drums, for that matter)

You can get other rims, but once I saw a milled adaptor plate that let you use the flat (non coined) wheels with the coined Brake drums. I have no idea if anyone makes them anymore or if you'd have any luck with them anyway, because it shortens the stud length and weakens the load capacity on the rear. I know there was a set of 4 of the adaptors on a 79 Brave in the Magic junkyard by Sob, but that's been a few years ago.

Don't want to buy 4 rims? buy later model brake drum/ axle bearing assemblies without the coins. (probably more expensive, unless you find them in a junkyard? and yes... a Dana axle is a dana axle. whether its ford or Dodge, so as long as its a "spicer" or dana 70 or 70F, dually, and the brakes are the same diameter, they will bolt on. (most of these are all the same size brakes, but there are other models of dana rear ends with larger and smaller brakes.)

What about the front rims? I'm curious as to what "they" did there. Mine has coined wheels all around, (1976 brakes on a 72, but they're "original" RM350 brakes, so to speak.)
so why do your front tires spin true? Perhaps the adaptors are used? your rig should have been 17.5's all around, but someone changed that, I know you have 16's now.

they do make 16's in coined versions. Hard to find though. Try a class C from 77-80, or a  dual rear wheel Dodge "KaryVan" (looks like a uhaul truck) if you can find one, or a 76-80 Dodge/Fargo D300/350 dually pickup, thay had them too.
The ford versions all don't have the cupped rims for the most part, but there are some out there with coined rims.

you can get them, it's just going to ba a hassle. - sorry!

Tom

[JDxeper]

I was able to collect 12 , 16" eight lug coined rims, from various junk yards, but eight of them were bent and not usable. My tire guy put them on a balance machine to check them out before they were cleaned and painted. Be sure to check used rims out well.  Its difficult to tell bent rims by eye ball.
I also found some new rims. They were $65 each.  The guy has an 800 number, but shipping maybe expensive.
F&S Take Off Parts, Inc   1-800-440-0721.  Be sure to describe them well and coined.  They were made in South America.  I also saw some on E-bay but they were higher.  A tire and wheel place might find them for you.
There are a lot of posts on coined rims and wheel size changes. Make sure the brakes will clear the new rims.
JD