My, what deep dish you have.
All the better to shove wide tires on.
Now I
really want some new tires and period correct 3/4 ton hubcaps.
These showed up last week while I was out of town in Colorado. They're the OE 8 Lug wheels (82 series in their catalogue) I ordered from Wheel Vintiques. 16" x 10" with white powdercoating. The powdercoat itself was actually an extra cost option, but I wanted them to be white like the stock steelies and I wanted them powdercoated for the extra bit of weather/abrasion resistance. For the base price they can be ordered either in bare steel or painted black. I plan to run 35x12.5 tires as soon as I've got the money for them. Originally I wanted to run tall skinny treads, but only Interco sells skinny tires in 35" diameters. Every other 35" tire will not fit properly on six or seven inch wide wheels (which is why I sold my stock style 16" x 7" eight lug steelies last year). I'm actually planning on purchasing Mickey Thompson Baja ATZs of the 315/75-R16 variety. The design rim they're measured on is 8.5" wide. The Wheel Vintiques OE 8 lugs are available in 6, 7, 8 and 10 inch widths, so I decided to step up to the 10" style.
These wheels have a 5" backspacing, which seems to be exactly the same as the 16" x ?" Dodge wheels the Suburban is sporting now. No interference to be reported with the calipers or tie rod ends. The wheels themselves do stick out beyond the fenders about an inch, but I hope that won't be a problem. Depending on how far out the tire tread sits, I may or may not need slight fender flares in the front in order to meet the letter of the Utah state lift laws.
Speaking of Utah laws, I did finally get my Suburban registered as a Vintage Vehicle without having to get a safety inspection. It only took five visits to the local DMV office. The local supervisor wouldn't relent when presented with the two sections of the Utah code that state vintage vehicles are exempt from safety inspections, nor would she budge when shown a page directly from the Safety Inspectors handbook (2011/2012 year handbook) in which is printed with bold, underlined text that vintage vehicles are exempt from safety inspections. The Utah Highway Patrol officer they told me to speak with on the matter sided with me too when he returned my phone call, but the local DMV office (the ones who'd told me to contact him in the first place) discounted his experience in this matter also. I actually had to call the Salt Lake call center myself, where the employee who took my call conferred with two separate supervisors who both reiterated that vintage vehicles are exempt from safety inspections. When I went back to the local DMV office and told their supervisor that I had direct confirmation from a Lead Agent at the main office in Salt Lake City and that she should contact them if further clarification was needed, she finally relented and gave me my vintage plate with current stickers. I was ready to drive to a DMV office in another county if they wouldn't listen to reason.