Thread: New Shoes For The GMC

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I have been wanting to replace the wheels and tires on my truck for a couple of years now. They've been on there since '01 and I am pretty tired of the look.


American Racing has come out with a Rallye style wheel which is what I have been looking for. A few companies have been making them in billet aluminum but the prices were much more then what I want to pay. The Americans are affordable and they will build them to my specs. I stopped at Discount Tire tonight and got prices. I'll swing by again Friday and order the rims. It takes 4 to 6 weeks to build them but that is a non-issue as the truck is in storage for the winter anyway.
Sizes are 18x8 w/5 1/2" BS in front and 18x10 w/6" BS in the rear. 255/45 and 295/25 Nitto 555's will be the tires.
Here are a few pics of the rims. I think these will great on the truck!

Nice looking wheel, then and now! Should complete the look for the pickup....

Real similar to the old slot wheels

I finally got the rims ordered on the 13th of January. Spent some time over xmas break pulling off the old rims and verifying back spacing. I also decided to go with a bit of a wheel/tire rake. Went with 17 x 8's in front with a bit smaller tire. 245/45. Will drop the front a bit AND allow me to remove the 1" spacers I've been running to drop it that much more. The 255's were right on the edge of the wheel well so the 245's will tuck a bit to allow the drop. The rears ended up with a 6.25" BS and the 295's will stuff in there great!

Should look great! Waiting for pictures!!

I like the look of those wheels too! I bet you're excited to see the new look!

Picked up the new shoes Tuesday afternoon on the way home from work. Had to do a test fit on the rears to make sure they fit. Like a glove! They fit great! I only fit one side because it was too dang cold to work on the concrete in the unheated storage barn. They will look real good though, will definitely change the character of the truck. The 295 isn't that much wider then the 275 that was on there but it's a bit taller and the 18" wheel really fills up the wheel well.
I'll try to get pics but I can't pull the truck outside anyway so it'll probably be a while before I do.

I bet you're pretty excited! They sound cool to me already!!

Got some pics of the new wheels (well, wheel..) on the truck today. The day I picked them up I test fit the left rear just to make sure my measurements were right.

Can't wait for this weather to let up!

Very nice!

I looked the new rims over when I picked them up. One was kinda rough but I couldn't see sending it back and waiting another 4 to 6 weeks for a new one to be made with no guarantee it would be any better then this one...
This is the wheel.

Here are some of the issues. This is scratched up with a nice gouge.

The edges of all of the slots were ugly. To heavy handed with the polisher. ate right into the edges of the slots.


I cobbled together this roller that clamps to the fab table, lets the tire roll nice and easy. Makes quick work out of sweetening up this rim.

In order to fix the slots I made a template to mark the radius needed to remove the rough stuff.

laying it in and lining it up with the existing slot made marking the trim lines easy.

Lined up and ready to mark.

I used a black Sharpie to mark the "new" edge of the slot.

Then I busted out the high tech alloy displacement device....
Mainly a big half-round file... Took about a half hour to get all of the edges cleaned up. Some were worse then others but they all need to be cleaned up.


This is the surface finish left by the file.

A little disappointing on the quality of the polishing job. The other three are okay, just this one is a sad job.
I broke out a sanding drum on a drill motor with 180 grit emery paper to start cleaning up the file cuts on the new openings.

after a few minutes of work this is how they turned out.

I ran the drum on the openings going from the 180 to 400 then 600, 1000 and finished up with 1200. Smoothed the edges good enough that some heavy polishing will bring the shine back.

Once I had that done I got busy taking out the scratches and gouges. I started with 400 grit on a rubber Dura-Block and started feathering them out.

Once I started sanding I ended up going over the whole face of the wheel. There were so many heavy cut lines and deep grooves from the half-assed factory polishing this was the only way to get a smooth surface... You can see the waves in the pic to the right of where I started sanding.

here is another pic after I had most of the scratches and gouge worked out. This also shows the waves better.

I used WD40 as a lube to "wet sand" all of the waviness out. I spent about an hour and a half doing this. Cleaning and re-sanding until all of the low spots were gone.

The hard part was getting the surface flat again. Once that was done it only took a couple of hours to step up through the grits. Going to 600, 1000, 1200 and then 1500. You can see the shine is already starting to develop at 1500.

I stopped a O'Rielly's tonight on my way home and picked up one pack each of 2000 and 3000 grit. I'll work at getting this ready for final polishing this week.
I ordered a nice polishing kit from Eastwood so I'll get all of the rims sanded out to 3000 grit before I use that.
The wheel looks a ton better with all of the openings repaired!

These will be beautiful once they are polished correctly.

Nice job refinishing the wheel, Mark! Dang shame that a guy has to rework brand new parts, some companies have gotten really lax on quality control over the years....I suppose with all the import crap on the market they have to cut corners wherever they can to stay competitive on the price point.

A great step by step post, Mark! Thanks for taking time to document & post!

Mark, you are a far more patient man than I am!! I'll have to go back through this thread to find out who made those.. I know I won't be ordering from them!

under edit, Hmmm american racing turned out that? That's just depressing!