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New to the group. Living in Florida. My 1971 Olds Delta 88 Royale Convertible gets delivered today. It has the 455. Can hardly wait. Have wire wheel covers here waiting for it. In the past I have had two 1959 T-Birds. One convertible and one hardtop. Three 1964 Impala SS. All with 327. One 1960 Plymouth Fury Convertible. One 1971 Firebird. One 1960 Camaro Rally Sport Convertible. One 1960 Dodge Charger R/T with the 440 Mag. One 1972 V-8 Chevy Vega that I built. Now I am old and going for comfort. Glad to be a part of this group. I have a lot of questions but will get to them later. People call me Dino.
Congrats. I don't know if you care, but these wires are from a late 70s-early 80s Olds. They use a retainer that is held with the lug nuts to allow the hub caps to be secured with a bolt under the snap-off center emblem. You want to use these retainers, as the hub caps will come flying off without them (go ahead, ask me how I know... ).
Be aware that there are two different retainer styles, one for 6" wide wheels and one for 7" wide wheels. Also, don't be surprised when the hub caps go click-click-click at low speeds.
I have these. Do they get mounted and then the wheel gets mounted or the wheel gets mounted first then these brackets go on then the wire wheel cover?
The wheel goes on first, with two lug nuts, then the retainer goes on with the remaining three. Note that the retainer requires special flanged lug nuts.
Didn't know these nuts cost so much. Found them on Ebay from about $4 to $23 each. Searched the web and found some for $2.19. They only had 9. I need 12. I bought the 9 and kept looking. Found more for $3 and change. Tried to buy some and the order would not go through. Moved on and found some at Autozone web site for $3.49. Went to Autozone this morning and had to special order them. I ordered 4 just in case one of these places came up short one. So should have them about Tuesday or Wednesday. I want to see what the car looks like with the wire wheel covers on.
Nice car you had. Same color. Matador Red. Of the 3 pics of mine, the middle one is where I changed to wire wheel covers. I like it better that way. Now I am trying to find a bracket to hold the front license plate. Got any ideas?
What, exactly, do you need to hold the front license plate? My '75 was originally sold in New Jersey, which is a two-plate state, so it already had a front plate bracket already in place, so I just attached the plate.
If additional hardware would have been available back in 1971 that your car doesn't have because of where it was originally sold, then I think your only choice is to adapt something generic from an auto parts store. If you're looking for something original, you'll have to find a junkyard car that has one, which may or may not be easy. It could be any '71 full-size, including Delta 88, 98, and Custom Cruiser. I don't know if other years would fit.
If your car were my car, I would just make something from an auto parts store work as whatever you choose to do will not be very visible since the bumper already has a nicely recessed cutout for the plate.
By the way, I may no longer own the '75, but I DO still have a Delta 88 convertible, same color, but an earlier generation. It's a '67. It came out of Ohio originally, so it has a front plate bracket, but we don't need that here in New Mexico, so I can put anything I want in the front, including an RCA "His Master's Voice" license plate I found in an antique store.
As an example regarding your situation, I owned a '73 Custom Cruiser for a few years and sold it about two years ago. I bought it out of West Virginia, where it was originally sold and which is a one-plate state, so it did not have a front plate bracket. I lived in Ohio at the time, and that's a two-plate state, so I needed to make something work. The result is below.
Note that it's not an Ohio plate, but rather just something decorative. That's because, shortly after I brought the car home, I found out that Ohio would allow you to put year-of-manufacture plates on the car if you registered it as an antique, and you needed only one license plate to do this. So after I had already rigged up the front plate bracket, I suddenly didn't need it any more. I could have removed it, but I thought I'd put the "1973" vanity plate on there so people didn't have to ask me what year it was when the saw the car.
There are a wide variety of generic front license plate brackets sold by Dorman and others, available at any auto parts store. You might need to drill a couple of holes in the bracket to match the ones in your bumper.
October 29th, 2016 | 08:14 AM
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