General Jumbo Restoration Cleveland Welding Wheels

Hello Doug,


I ran into your website after doing a search on General Jumbos and I was wondering if there is a possibility you can help me or
guide me in the right direction.


I have what I believe to be a set of Cleveland Welding Wheels aka General Jumbos, two of the wheels have some bad pits on the outer wheel and I would like to restore the wheels so I can run them on my old Chevy. The pits are pretty deep but have not gone through the wheel itself. They are on the inside area of the wheel, possibly the tires held moisture.


I was wondering what would be the best way to either change out the outer or if there is any way of fixing the pits. I have contacted
Stockton Wheel and they say they can change the outer but they want to weld the spoke to the outer. Do you think that's a good idea?


The wheels I have are a 15 inch 10 spoke and are a 6 lug, they do fit my Chevy. I would like to restore them like the set you have pictured, chrome inner and black powder coated outer with the caps being chromed also.


I have included a couple of pictures of the set of wheels I have. Thank you for taking your time to read this and any information would be appreciated.


Regards,


Gerardo

Gerardo,
I don't know which blog post you were reading on my web site. If you were reading about the Chevy 9 spoke wheels and saw the picture of the one that looked finished. That was a process called Cosmichrome. The process was a failure. There may be someone in your area that is capable of applying the material properly, but of the 4 wheels that I had done, only one had reasonably good adhesion. The other three pealed when I pulled the masking tape. The absolute accuracy of application is extremely critical, and unfortunately, the guy that did mine, failed to meet that critical accuracy.

If you have access to someone capable of applying the Cosmichrome, it would be acceptable to weld the centers to the rims and then do your finishing.

If you plan to chrome the centers and paint the rims, I would advise you to put them together with insert nuts in the spokes, as I did with the 11 spoke wheels. Do your fitting  with the insert nuts in the spokes, and countersink your fasteners into the rims. That way you can chrome the centers a lot less expensive than doing the whole wheel and then painting the rims after.

Either way you go with your restoration project, it will be an expensive and complex process. Reaching your goal will be very rewarding with some very attractive and unique wheels.

Doug