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MG MGB Technical - wire wheel conversion

I have a 78 MGB with rostyles. Just bought some wire wheels that came with the front hubs. Now I need the hubs for the back. Should I buy the "conversion hubs" or get the axles and hubs that came with the wire wheel cars? Thanks.
MARK NEISSER

Mark-
Wire wheel conversion hubs are nothing but a rip-off aimed at the ignorant and the gullible. The ugly truth is that the width of the rear axle used for wire wheels was narrower than that of the disc wheel axle, so simply mounting conversion hubs on a disc wheel axle will make the wire wheels set so far out that you'll have big headaches with the wheels rubbing inside the wheelwells. Get a wire wheel rear axle and do it right, you won't regret it.
Steve S.

thanks Steve. I'll take your advice.
MARK NEISSER

Proper wire-wheel conversion hubs are narrower than standard hubs but they still put the rear tyres closer to the outer arches than they should be. Fitting harder rear springs resolved most of this but introduced other problems. In the end I did as Steve advises and fitted a pukka wire-wheel axle. You will need to replace the handbrake cable with a wire-wheel one too. Also check to see if you have an axle off a GT or a roadster, the GT had more powerful slave cylinders and this will cause locking on a roadster. To fit roadster slaves you have to re-drill the backplates as the locating roll-pin is in a different place.
Paul Hunt

Mark,
To my surprise I've just found out my 77 mgb roadster has a disk wheel axle but fitted with wire wheels. The hubs look like normal w/w hubs and not the conversion ones, and I'm definitely not having any problems with rubbing with standard tyres. Bigger tyres well may cause a problem though.

Charlie.
Charles Goozee

Okay I'm confused. Do you need the whole rear end or just the two axles for the conversion?

Cheers!
James Budrow

This thread was discussed on 14/01/2002

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