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Home » Public Forums » GMCnet » Hand made aluminum tire cover (How I made an aluminum spare tire cover.)
Hand made aluminum tire cover [message #194387] Sun, 30 December 2012 18:40 Go to previous message
kerry pinkerton is currently offline  kerry pinkerton   United States
Messages: 2565
Registered: July 2012
Location: Harvest, Al
Karma:
Senior Member
I was talking to Ken Henderson and mentioned I was making an aluminum cover for my spare. He said: "They're not that expensive you know." I responded, "Yeah, but this is what I do and buying one would be like you having someone else do an alignment on your coach." Laughing Laughing

Anyway, I've made one and the photos are in this album:

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/g6262-tire-cover.html

Descriptions are in this tread.

I started by cutting a piece of aluminum wide enough (9") and marking the area where I wanted to shrink the metal so it would roll around.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0013.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0013.jpg

This is one of my metalshaping machines, an Eckold KF460. It's a pretty sophisticated machine but there are lots of ways to shape metal and everything I'm about to describe could have been done without power tools. That said, I'm old and worn out and since I invested in these tools I'm dang sure going to use them. Laughing

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0022.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0022.jpg

These are the actual shrinking dies. These particular dies are called NOMAR dies because they hold the metal by friction rather than teeth while it pulls the metal into itself causing it to shrink.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0031.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0031.jpg

This machine works very fast and can get away from you in half a heartbeat. But in a few minutes, I had the edges shrunk

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0052.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0052.jpg

You can see the scuff marks caused by the tooling. There is nothing there literally...it is just a scuff. Really amazing tooling and there is nothing else in the world that works like these NOMAR dies.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0042.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0042.jpg

Then I cut out a disc of aluminum and laid out some concentric circles. The circles will help me shrink uniformly and not end up with a taco shell.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0082.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0082.jpg

Back to the KF420 rotating the disc evenly and consistently as the machine works.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0092.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0092.jpg

After a while I had a 3" deep bowl which is what I was after.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0101.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_0101.jpg

This are some of my wheeling machines. Needed to get a bit further away.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_011.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_011.jpg

This is the business end of the machine. I wheeled evenly over the shrunk area with very light pressure just to even out any irregularities and blend the surface.

http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_012.jpg
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/data/6262/D_012.jpg

more in next post

Kerry Pinkerton - North Alabama Had 5 over the years. Currently have a '06 Fleetwood Discovery 39L

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