Fisherguy

Here’s another thread on machining H2 wheels. When I finally got my H2's I took one of my factory RAM caps and held it up to the H2 wheel trying to figure out all the trimming required to make them fit. I just figured it would be easier to machine the wheel than to trim the caps. I’ve read how some people use a Dremmel Drill to trim the caps, some use a table saws, band saws. hack saws etc. One guy said he used his skill saw clamped to his workbench somehow and trimmed them that way, yikes!

While trying to figure out which tires to get I bought a set of GMC caps after seeing Spankdog’s setup. He told me his GMC caps fit his H2’s without any mods but he didn’t know for sure what kinda truck they were off. I bought some locally only to find they didn’t quite fit, they were about 1/8” too wide, just my luck!

Anyhow, I mentioned machining the wheels in a thread on this forum and Kanucklehead posted he’s be willing to do it for me for a great price on one of his CNC machines and I want to thank him for all his help!

Here’s what we did.


Here’s a picture I’m sure you’ve all seen before, the center portion of the wheel we need to machine to fit over our hubs:






Here’s a picture of the portion we removed to make room for the bigger caps, note how it’s more of a lip than a structural part of the wheel. You can see how there’s a gap at the bottom that the Hummer cap fits into the hold the cap in place. Near as we could tell there was no reason we couldn’t remove it.






The CNC machine doing it’s thing.
Len (aka Kanucklehead) programmed the proper dimensions into the machine so all he had to do is clamp down each wheel, find it’s center and the machine did each wheel in about 15 minutes tops.







Len and my carpool bud Billy discussing hydraulic punches, CNC milling machines, lathes etc etc, Billy likes that sorta thing:








Here’s the first wheel after milling, we did the center hole to 4.78” and the cap part to 8.47”.
Note the notch in the picture to pry the H2 cap off, also you can see the recess around each lugnut.







Once we had the first wheel done we dropped the RAM cap onto the wheel, as we turned it we could feel the tabs of it dropping into the recessed area around each lug nut. We put the wheel on my truck and tried the cap but it wouldn’t “snap” into place onto the nuts so we ground down the tabs with an angle grinder, here’s the tabs before and after:

GlennRMK

Nice

Unfortunately not a lot of people have access to a CNC

I am a Mechanical Engineering student and tried to talk one of my professors into using the CNC to do the H2 wheels but he didn't bite unfortunately.

Fisherguy

Our first wheel, we did the spare first “just in case”, don’t ask how long it took us to get the cap off the first time, we hadn’t thought of that yet! (by then we’d had a few “tasty beverages)





Once we knew how to modify the wheels to get the caps on, we had the figure out how to get them off. The normal notch on the caps we use for our stockers is now below the surface of the wheel, so I put some masking tape on the caps so that the tape would show at the 2 notches in the wheel used to take the Hummer cap off. With the cap in place on the wheel (not bolted to the truck) I put a screwdriver into the notch and scratched through the tape:







I removed the cap and now could see the mark I’d made.






Using a Dremmel drill with a grinding wheel I ground a little slit into the cap where I'd scratched through the tape, here's what it looked like with the tape removed:






You can see the slit down in the slot:





… and use a screwdriver to pry the cap off:







Here’s a shot of the finished product with the RAM caps

Fisherguy

… and a couple of the H2’s with the GMC caps.
The GM wheels lugnuts have threads on their tops, the plastic nuts of the cap thread through the caps onto the lugnuts locking the cap in place. Unfortunately the GM’s have different threads so we can’t use the GMC lugnuts on our trucks, but if you tap the plastic nuts onto our lug nuts they fit tight enough that with 8 of them in place the caps aren’t going anywhere:









I think I'm gonna stick with the Ram caps.
Just wanna say thanks again for all your help Kanucklehead!

GlennRMK

Dodge center caps look way better

Wheels look great!

BLACK PEARL

Times Two!!!

greg_bingham

how come you guys want to run H2 rims? the appearance, offset?

greg

GlennRMK

They do have the correct offset and look nice

4.5" backspacing on aftermarket wheels just stick out too much

5-6" backspacing is really needed on these trucks IMO

kanuckle head

Very nice write up & great detail

Thanks for the credit I was glad to help anyways it was nice to prototype on your rims cause soon when the rubbers on mine wear out it will be next in line

PS the dodge cap rocks on the chrome H2s

Fisherguy

Yes and yes, they look good, a little different, how many Ram's you see with H2 wheels where you live, plus w-a-y- cheaper than aftermarket mags that always seem to stick out too far.
They're easy to clean to, you can put your hole hand between the 'spokes'.

Hope to see you Saturday Len.

MikeyB

Nice work!

MikeyB

greg_bingham

i want to hang out in that shop and drink brew and mill things....

Fisherguy

lol
yup, Tim the Tool Man would love it there!

rootercycles

Those look great! I too would like to hang out and make things on the CNC. I worked for a major medical device company in Minneapolis a couple of years ago and I had a good friend that made 3D fixtures for various R&D departments. It so happened that it coincided with a custom motorcycle I was building and he made me all sorts of things you wouldn't find elsewhere. He could rip out a custom kickstand, fork neck, wheel spacers, etc. in what I thought was minutes.

CampingMan

niice, the way the dodge should look like. Maybe if I do enough driving & camping this year I can wear out my stock BFG's and get something a little bigger too

A side question . . .. where have you been picking all your goodies? (Exhaust brake, Bilsteins, etc) Picking them up south of the border or have you found a good retailer up here?

thx