ford 3000 wheels

[joel s]

sold my 8n and upgraded to a 1975 ford 3000 and it
has 16.9 x 24 tires on the rear with 15in wide
wheels. the wheel center seems to be reversed {alot
of offset} so the rear track is very wide. can i
put the wheel center the other way with out the
tires hitting the fenders

 

[Ultradog MN]

Yes you can change the rims/centers around to several different variations.
The widths printed in this photo from an original manual will not be correct because your tires are wider but the way of changing things around still applys.

 

[Sean in PA]

The widths listed in that diagram are the widths between the centers of the treads, so they will still be the same. Your wider tires will make the distance between the inside sidewalls of the tires be less than with the stock tire width, but that number isn't listed in that diagram anyway.

The 16.9 number is the tread width and the widest width of the tire is out on the sidewall and is a little wider than the tread width, so they are probably actually closer to 18 inches, but measure yours to be sure. And since there will be half of each tire's width toward the inside of the center line of each wheel, you should just subtract the widest width of one tire (18 inches or whatever it actually measures) from the number listed in the diagram for your configuration.

As to whether you can just reverse the wheels without hitting the fenders, that would depend on what the current configuration is of the center with regard to the rim. That diagram shows that you can't reverse the widest configuration at all, even with the standard width tires, so if yours is at that configuration, the only way to narrow the width of the rear wheel track will be to reconfigure the rims on the centers, and then you could possibly reverse the dish of the centers.

If it turns out that your centers and rims are currently configured so that the tires will fit outside the fenders by just reversing the dish, don't forget to swap them side-to-side, or the tread pattern will be backwards.