Strange K.O. wheels

[Wayne M.]

A friend has a set of 5 KO's + hardware that appear (IMO) to be original, but with the following deviations from side-by-side comparison with my '66 factory rim. His wheel back side has the 24 mould injection points, as stock, and the slightly raised (flat) pad oval in which you'd normally expect to see the K-H and D-49986 embossed is completely blank. The original cast surface and edge flash is still there (ie nothing ground off). There are no date stamps, which, if original, would place them sometime prior to early '65. Of course, there are no "Western" or any other repro markings. The front side of the wheel is exactly like my original, including vane width, outer rim depth and x-section, etc.

The spinners are bone stock, with all "behind the ear" markings as expected.

The adaptors appear original in all forged and machined surfaces (again, side-by-side comparison with mine) with the following exception. About 2" inside the cone, looking in from the flange towards the thread end, where, on the edge of a stepped diameter change, there is normally the debossed D-49xxx (can't read mine completely), his adaptor is machined (in a lathe, not ground off) to (IMO) remove all evidence of the K-H markings in this location. Now this is weird, as 90% of original KO owners are not even aware that these markings exist (including me, until about 6 months ago; thanks NDB).

My obvious question(s): Has anyone seen this before ? Are they factory K-H but pre-release ? Was there anyone re-popping KO wheels (at least more than 10 years ago) from original moulds ?

[Bill Clupper]

Re: Strange K.O. wheels

"Repro" wheels started showing up in the late '70's so they have been with us in various forms for quite a while. I would examine the outer rim area near the tire bead, as the earliest "non bootleg" wheels deviate significantly from the originals in this area due to the Federal side impact regs. As to the existence of repro off the original tooling, it's possibel, would make intresting history if they could be tracked.

[Bill D.]

Re: Strange K.O. wheels

Wayne & Bill,

Several years ago at Corvettes @ Carlisle a friend of mine purchased a set of "new in the box" KO wheels for his 65 fuelie. As it turns out, they were not made by Kelsey-Hayes. The were made by a company called KH Wheel of Natick Massachusetts (I think). After some investigating, the story he got was that they were made in the original Kelsey-Hayes moulds. KH Wheel had purchased the moulds from Kelsey when they stopped making them for GM. I also think that the reference to Kelsey had to be removed from the moulds. He was not a happy person, since he had paid "all the money" for correct NOS. If you want to persue this, let me know and I will try to get more info. I have not talked to him in several years.

Wild Bill