American Racing TA70 Wheels

[meanmachinemodels]

For anyone looking for something different for their vintage trans-am builds here's my latest wheel. Available in 1/24 and 1/18, but I can print them in larger scales upon request. Feel free to email me on my website. www.meanmachinemodels.com

 

 

 

Edited January 7 by meanmachinemodels
too many photos

[Bainford]

Do the wheels scale out to 15"? Or perhaps a better question; what is the exact diameter of the 1/24 scale wheel?

[meanmachinemodels]

11 hours ago, Bainford said:

Do the wheels scale out to 15"? Or perhaps a better question; what is the exact diameter of the 1/24 scale wheel?

I have all the measurements listed in the description on my site. All my 15" wheels are a 16.93mm diameter to fit a 17mm ID tire.

[peteski]

These wheels look very nice.

While the inner diameter of a tire is 15" that does not translate directly to what is visible on the car and on the properly scaled wheel of a model.  That is because the wheel has a raised rim in which the bead sits.  The visible diameter of a 15" wheel is roughly 1.5" larger than the specified diameter. And that is what we see on a real car or on the model.

So a 1:1 scale 15" wheel has a visible diameter of approx. 16.5".  In 1:24 scale that would be 0.6875" or 17.4625.  Remember that when designing your model wheels. This is true for all the passenger car wheels. Might be different for truck tires - I have not measured those.

16.93mm in 1:24 scales up to 15.99" visible wheel diameter. It is slightly undersized, but not by much (about 0.5 scale inches).

16.93mm in 1:25 scales up to 16.66" visible diameter, so that scale 15" wheel is actually better suited to be perfectly in scale for a 1:25 model.

Looks like Alex did make an attempt to make his wheels correctly sized (visually), but IMO didn't go quite far enough. At least according to my calculations.  I might be splitting hairs, but when designing something from scratch, might as well scale them properly.  Good thing is that using CAD and 3D printing on-demand, it is fairly easy to resize the design.

 

[Bainford]

2 hours ago, meanmachinemodels said:

I have all the measurements listed in the description on my site. All my 15" wheels are a 16.93mm diameter to fit a 17mm ID tire.

Thanks Alex. Lots of very nice looking tire & wheel sets on your site. Thanks for producing wheels in a proper 15" size. I see a lot of nice old-school wheels & tires on ebay and whatnot, but very often in 17" sizes or larger, which won't work for me.

Do you do custom orders? I am thinking specifically with regard to the tire brand on the sidewall. It is difficult to find late-60s and 70s period correct bias-ply muscle car tires, such as Tiger Paw or Uniroyal Road Huggers, or my personal favourite, the Tornado 60 and Tornado 70 white letter tires which were on almost every hot muscle car around here in the 70s. Your Goodyear Polyglas tires would be excellent candidates for sidewalls branded as Tornados or Tiger Paws.

[meanmachinemodels]

On 1/8/2025 at 10:27 AM, peteski said:

These wheels look very nice.

While the inner diameter of a tire is 15" that does not translate directly to what is visible on the car and on the properly scaled wheel of a model.  That is because the wheel has a raised rim in which the bead sits.  The visible diameter of a 15" wheel is roughly 1.5" larger than the specified diameter. And that is what we see on a real car or on the model.

So a 1:1 scale 15" wheel has a visible diameter of approx. 16.5".  In 1:24 scale that would be 0.6875" or 17.4625.  Remember that when designing your model wheels. This is true for all the passenger car wheels. Might be different for truck tires - I have not measured those.

16.93mm in 1:24 scales up to 15.99" visible wheel diameter. It is slightly undersized, but not by much (about 0.5 scale inches).

16.93mm in 1:25 scales up to 16.66" visible diameter, so that scale 15" wheel is actually better suited to be perfectly in scale for a 1:25 model.

Looks like Alex did make an attempt to make his wheels correctly sized (visually), but IMO didn't go quite far enough. At least according to my calculations.  I might be splitting hairs, but when designing something from scratch, might as well scale them properly.  Good thing is that using CAD and 3D printing on-demand, it is fairly easy to resize the design.

 

My 15" wheels are scaled to 16" to account for the bead and have an outer lip to "sit" into the tire. With the lip it measures 17.6mm diameter. Everyone has their own way of doing it, this is just mine. 

[meanmachinemodels]

On 1/8/2025 at 11:38 AM, Bainford said:

Thanks Alex. Lots of very nice looking tire & wheel sets on your site. Thanks for producing wheels in a proper 15" size. I see a lot of nice old-school wheels & tires on ebay and whatnot, but very often in 17" sizes or larger, which won't work for me.

Do you do custom orders? I am thinking specifically with regard to the tire brand on the sidewall. It is difficult to find late-60s and 70s period correct bias-ply muscle car tires, such as Tiger Paw or Uniroyal Road Huggers, or my personal favourite, the Tornado 60 and Tornado 70 white letter tires which were on almost every hot muscle car around here in the 70s. Your Goodyear Polyglas tires would be excellent candidates for sidewalls branded as Tornados or Tiger Paws.

I will add the Tornado's and Uniroyal tires to my list. I'm working on Goodyear Billboard tires now and have Firestone Wide Oval, Cooper Cobra, and the old stock BFGoodrich Radial T/A tires on my to-do list. I'll have Cragar G/T Plus and Mopar Steelies with poverty caps coming next week. Planning to focus on vintage 15" sets from Vintage Wheel Catalogs.

[peteski]

On 1/11/2025 at 11:46 AM, meanmachinemodels said:

My 15" wheels are scaled to 16" to account for the bead and have an outer lip to "sit" into the tire. With the lip it measures 17.6mm diameter. Everyone has their own way of doing it, this is just mine. 

What I was explaining is that your bead diameter, to be properly scaled, is still not quite large enough.  The lip of a 15" diameter wheel would measure 16.5" (not 16"). I mentioned that because when you do your won CAD design, it is easy to change it to make the dimensions more accurate. Just making a suggestion  . . .

[Bainford]

On 1/11/2025 at 1:12 PM, meanmachinemodels said:

I will add the Tornado's and Uniroyal tires to my list. I'm working on Goodyear Billboard tires now and have Firestone Wide Oval, Cooper Cobra, and the old stock BFGoodrich Radial T/A tires on my to-do list. I'll have Cragar G/T Plus and Mopar Steelies with poverty caps coming next week. Planning to focus on vintage 15" sets from Vintage Wheel Catalogs.

Very glad to hear this. The old school Radial T/As is another awesome choice. Cheers.

[Bainford]

4 hours ago, peteski said:

What I was explaining is that your bead diameter, to be properly scaled, is still not quite large enough.  The lip of a 15" diameter wheel would measure 16.5" (not 16"). I mentioned that because when you do your won CAD design, it is easy to change it to make the dimensions more accurate. Just making a suggestion  . . .

I am sure that, to some degree, this varies from one type of wheel to another. On my 1:1 Lotus, the 13" wheels measure 14 1/32" in total diameter. In scale, a straight-up 14" would be close enough for my purposes, and I'm pretty fussy. I think the sizes stated above are pretty close. If we are to nit-pick scale accuracy too vehemently, then one would have to physically measure the outer diameter of each wheel he intends to produce and size them accordingly. I think even the meanest among us won't require that level of scale diligence. Not to mention, bespoke tire sizes.

Frankly, if we are to err, I would personally prefer to be slightly undersize than slightly oversize.

[meanmachinemodels]

17 hours ago, Bainford said:

I am sure that, to some degree, this varies from one type of wheel to another. On my 1:1 Lotus, the 13" wheels measure 14 1/32" in total diameter. In scale, a straight-up 14" would be close enough for my purposes, and I'm pretty fussy. I think the sizes stated above are pretty close. If we are to nit-pick scale accuracy too vehemently, then one would have to physically measure the outer diameter of each wheel he intends to produce and size them accordingly. I think even the meanest among us won't require that level of scale diligence. Not to mention, bespoke tire sizes.

Frankly, if we are to err, I would personally prefer to be slightly undersize than slightly oversize.

I would agree that 1:1 size varies. My 1:1 15" Torq Thrust D wheels measure 16" in diameter and my 1:1 17" 4Runner wheels measure 18.5" diameter. 

[peteski]

I guess to be perfectly in-scale one would have to actually measure the specific 1:1 wheels. I guess that 0.5" (or 0.021" in 1:24) one way or another is not going to make that much difference after all.