My first hour on the internet left me confused and concerned at the cost. You can buy a complete kit to do the conversion for about £2,000 which seems like an awful lot of money.
As well as the wheels themselves there is the issue of changing the hubs over, which cost around £90 each.
From my research from the internet it would seem that there are 3 options, chrome (most expensive), something that looks like chrome and painted (least expensive). Many are now made in India under some kind of patent or license from Dunlop, who I always thought made tyres, but in the past they also made wire wheels.
Size is an issue - cars of that era (the 60s) used 5,5.5 and 6 inches in width wheels. The issue with my car is that if I want anything wider than 5 inches then I would need to fit coombes spats. These are available, but would need fitting and spraying in to match. So 5 inches it is. I have spent weeks trawling the internet to find some second hand ones. One of the problems is that many of the advertisers say thing like "from an E type Jaguar". These might fit, or they may not. My car is from 1969; Mark 2 Jags and Daimlers of that era changed slightly in 1967 which means that wheels from an earlier period do not fit (not sure why not). Curly or flat appears to be one of the main differences. So many on e-bay may be suitable but in the absence of knowing the year or the model number of the wheel there is no point bidding. One chap in Essex, who appears to deal in wire wheels judging from the number he has on e-bay was happy to supply the right info. He has a set of 4 and he wants £326 with me having to collect them. So my intention is to buy these and get some hubs and make my car look lovely. We will see how smoothly that all goes.
One interesting thing that did occur to me. All of the wire wheels that you see for sale are in sets of 4. But there is a spare wheel in all of these cars which will be useless once the hubs have been changed over. Any ideas why they do not advertise 5?
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