ISO information about the 14" wire wheels put on '57 T-birds

Pink T-Bird

Pink T-Bird

Active Member
Last seen
Joined
Aug 11, 2020
Thunderbird Year
1957
I'm trying to address the vibration and rumble at 55 mph and above the prior owner of my car lived with for the 10 years he had it.
I have 14" 48 spoke chromed wire wheels with KH and Fomoco in an oval stamped on two of the mounting flanges between the lug holes. Earlier this week I took the wheels off the car and left them with the only wire wheel specialist here in Colorado that I could find. They reported today two wheels are fine, one needs some attention, and one is beyond repair. They also let me know my tires are part of the problem as they are either 21, 31 or 41 years old (3 digit date code) despite looking new. I knew about the tires age. I'm relieved to know two wheels are good, and one is salvageable, but the big problem is I can not seem to find a 48 spoke replacement wheel...
What year(s) and what model Ford or Mercury used 14" 48 spoke wheels? Did any of the aftermarket suppliers have the rights to the KH and fomoco script, or are these definitely OEM parts? And most importantly WHERE can I find a single wheel? All the replacement T-bird wheels I can find are 56 spoke.
 
I assume KH stands for kelsey hayes wheels. Post photos. A picture is worth a thousand words.
 
The wheels are at the shop an hour from here so no pictures of the KH or Fomoco logo, but I'm pretty sure folks who can help with this question already know what those look like ;-). Here is the wheel on the car.1957_ford_thunderbird_LF_Wheel.jpg
And yes KH is Kelsey Hayes, as I understand they were one of the largest supplies of wheels to Ford at the time
 
BEST SUGGESTION.....Call Ford Corporate. they may be able to hook you up with the right wheel.
They really have a team that helps with 60+ year old cars and fitment of parts that were never meant for them?!? Wow, I would NOT have expected that. You wouldn't happen to know the name or phone number of that group? I wouldn't even want to guess what they might be called.
 
Ford never sold the 57 Tbird with wire wheels. Those are an aftermarket wheel. You can find them check with Coker, I purchased mine from True Spoke out of CA.
 
Here is what I learned about wire wheels in the last week. Posting a summary here in the hope it may help others figure stuff out more easily...
Wire wheels were never offered on T-birds until '62, only on the Roadsters apparently.
It's been suggested you likely could also buy them over the counter at you local Ford dealer in 62 - 66 or so (Not 100% sure on that one).
They were 14" 48 spoke wire wheels made by Kelsey Hayes, with faux knock offs to hide the lug nuts, 5.5" width rim.
They had C2SZ-1007-B as the part number.
Tru-spoke once made 42 spoke replicas, but not any more. They now make 56 spoke versions in both 14 & 15" diameter. They look nice, but don't match my other three wheels.
The older 14" 42 spoke version of Tru-spoke I could find had the lug nuts exposed, not concealed by the knock offs. CSPIDY, is that what you have? A guy near me has a set of these on his '56, I can get a picture.
The original C2SZ-1007-B are really rare now and really (at least to me) expensive. There are at least 2 places in CA restoring them and one on the east coast. It is really hard to get to the three shops directly, you need to go through Prestige, Minter, Hills or Casco etc. One of those three shops will occasionally sell on eBay
Dayton Wire wheels is also rumored to repair/restore original 42 spoke kelsey Hayes. I could find no evidence of it on their website, so it remains a rumor.
Ford Corporate DOES NOT have any type of service to help you find obsolete parts from one year of Ford that will fit on another year of Fordr, such as '62/63 Thunderbird wheels onto a 57 T-bird. At least not with any name I could think of to plug in to google.
And maybe the most important - if you have 42 spoke wheels, 5.5" wide, look at the hub under the knock off. On real 62/63 T-bird wire wheels there will be KH stamped on one of the flats between two lug holes and then 1 flat counterclockwise there will be a Fomoco oval stamped. If you have these wheels get wheel locks! They are $1400 each to replace (plus the cost of tire and tube).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If I understand you correctly, there are other wire wheels that fit your car. Have you considered selling the three good wheels for the high price they are bringing? You could then use the money for another matching set of four wheels. I know that you’d rather keep the current look but it sounds like a long shot.
 
The early production 1962 model Kelsey Hayes factory wheels were also recalled after several castoatrophic failures including Elvis Presley's car. See description here-
Thanks, Interesting to know that piece of history. Were those C2SZ-1007-A? I was wondering how a unique wire wheel got a B suffix. The video clip won't play, but I could blow up the still shots to look at the wheels. If the car in the picture has the recalled wheels then I'm safe. The wheel I posted at the start of this thread looks visually quite different.
 
Not sure of how many spokes mine are, I purchased mine in early 2017 and will have to count the spokes to be sure. I will be with my 57 this weekend and will get back with you
Did you check with Coker? They were selling them back then.
 
Coker's present offering is the same 56 spoke wheel offered elsewhere, $429 each.
I was able to procure a single restored Kelsey Hayes 42 spoke wheel from one of the California restorers I was put in touch with, and they're giving me $200 credit for my core after seeing several pictures of it to confirm it is a real deal KH from a 62/63 Sport Roadster. After dealing with the restorers it feels like because there are so few in circulation, and they belong on Sport Roadsters, if you don't have a true Sport Roadster, then you have to have a wheel to turn in to be able to get a restored one... I guess that makes some sense since there are good looking aftermarket wheels out there for anyone not in possession of Sport Roadster or a set of KH wheels already.
 
Last edited:
Anyone reading this thread please note my typo after the initial post. For some reason I typed 42 spoke several times without realizing it. These are 48 spoke K-H Sport Roadster wheels from 62/63 Sport Roadsters. My wheels had date codes from 1963, so if there was a recall these are post recall wheels.

In some off line conversations with a few sport roadster owners they believe the whole Elvis thing and recall is urban legend. I did find the one site that 'authoritatively' stated there was a recall but it states a number of things that are NOT true. For example - based on myself and a Sport Roadster person examining over 2 dozen wheels with Feb 62 through October 63 date codes, the spokes are not 5/16" (0.3125") diameter as claimed in the posting, they are 0.237" to 0.240", even "thinner" than the alleged pre-recall 1/4" (0.250") spokes on Elvis' car. And there are recent pictures of Elvis' car when it was recently for sale, and still no wire wheels. And of course the Twilight Zone TV show mentioned above with the same steel wheels and wheel covers as Elvis' car. Maybe the wire wheels were not ready for production initially and alternate wheels went on the early cars to get them out to celebs and TV for publicity? Who knows? I did find it interesting in all the wheels we looked at, none were date coded before February '62. And a google and a bing search did not find any 1961 newspaper accounts of a recall. Both searches found the single web page with the recall claim and the inaccurate wheel specs, and other sites that point to that particular site as their source.
 
Back
Top