Drag wheels polished and installed!

Justins00ss

Active member
So I finally got my drag wheels on the GTO. Something easy turned into a cluster!

So my first obstacle was fitting the front wheels. The offset wasn`t quite right for my car and made them stick out. After a discussion with the manufacturer ( Racestar Industries) they were super helpful and suggest that milling a 1/2 inch of the hub of the front wheels would get me right where I needed and not compromise the integrity of the wheel.

So after talking with the machine shop they said 2 weeks it would be done. Long story short it took over 4 weeks. But he did a awesome job and charged fairly.

Next was getting my tires mounted and balanced. My buddy said for me to bring them over to his shop. So last night I did. He got the fronts mounted and aired up no problem. Then he went to do the rears. He got them mounted up but couldn`t get them to bead. His shop doesn`t have enough air pressure supposedly. So he went on to balancing the fronts. Got one done no problem then his balancer went on the fritz lol. That ended the night.

So today I brought them over to another shop and they got them done.

I got them home and was able to get them mounted without much issue. Need to do a tiny bit of massaging on the rear inner wheel wells. Other than that we are good!

So before I even got tires mounted I went ahead and polished them up using McKee`s RV chrome and aluminum polish. For a machine I used my Rupes Nano ibrid with a blue Rupes pad on a 12mm throw.







After getting the tires mounted and balanced they had some finger prints etc on them. So a quick wipe down with Mckees fast wax worked awesome. I will be coating them in the future. Then I finished off the tires with Mckees gloss tire gel.

Wheels are Racestars 15x10 and 17x7. Tires are 215/50/17 fronts and Hoosier QTP bias ply 27x10.5x15.

Very happy with the outcome












 
Sweet action !

Careful and try never to get caught in the rain. I Used to drive those and ET streets around all the time and if you accidentally got caught in the rain yikes ! 25 mph tops lol


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Awesome! They look great. That setup should do the trick as well...hooking shouldn`t be an issue. Bias-ply DR`s on the back? Gonna get some `sway` with them that will take some time getting used to!
 
Really looks fun Justin. I hope these shoes run just the way you are hoping they will. They look great but I`m wondering why you didn`t opt for a Drag Radial or at least they don`t appear to be? I`ve been wrong before.
 
Awesome! They look great. That setup should do the trick as well...hooking shouldn`t be an issue. Bias-ply DR`s on the back? Gonna get some `sway` with them that will take some time getting used to!


Thanks bud. Yeah I have ran these Hoosiers before on past cars without much issue. They do sway a little but I am not concerned about it.

Really looks fun Justin. I hope these shoes run just the way you are hoping they will. They look great but I`m wondering why you didn`t opt for a Drag Radial or at least they don`t appear to be? I`ve been wrong before.

Thanks bud. So my main reason for not running a drag radial is that along with being sticky a drag radial is stiff. And for a stick car with a mostly stock Independent Rear End if it starts to wheel hop then hook it`s a disaster for it.

The bias ply`s are still sticky but have some give/wrinkle to soften the hit.
 
Do you need to heat those up to get traction. Drive a car with drag tires a few blocks once when a buddies trailer lost a wheel blocks from where he Garaged it. The tires griped like hockey pucks. I thought they were worn. He said they needed to be heated up to grip.
 
Do you need to heat those up to get traction. Drive a car with drag tires a few blocks once when a buddies trailer lost a wheel blocks from where he Garaged it. The tires griped like hockey pucks. I thought they were worn. He said they needed to be heated up to grip.

Bingo. Yup unlike regular street tires with a little bit of aka burnout they get a bit sticky lol.
 
A sleeper no more! That tire/wheel combination looks really aggressive, fast, and mean. Awesome car Justin! I wish they had the Rupes Nano back then when I had my Weld Racing wheels.
 
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