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SURMOD
1930 Hudson Super 8
Split Rims
On the right you can see the tool I purchased at a swap meet that is designed especially for these split rims. It's manufactured by Pacific Tool Company and dated 1924.
The procedure is to spread the 3 arms equally around the rim, then crank the lever until the tips on each arm are between the tire and the rim. Then with a hammer, give them each a hit and the end of the arm pushes in between the tire and the rim. Next you crank on the lever and it begins to compress the rim.
Having never done this before I seemed to think that I would pry up on the clasping mechanism and it would pop up. But I was wrong.
The clasping mechanism is all one piece with the rim. It has two pins that rotate and pivot. This means that to compress the rim, a series of steps has to be taken in a specific order at fairly specific times.
The first step is to tighten the rim tool pulling the one side straight towards the centre of the rim.
At this point you keep cranking the tool until the side of the rim that is being compressed is overlapping the other side. At this time the compressed side of the rim must change direction and start to move at an angle to the left as it continues to compress.
The next step is to keep cranking the tool and compressing it, but as you crank it tighter you hit the 3 arms on the side right at the rim with a hammer, forcing the entire tool to move counterclockwise. What this does is change the direction of the compression of the rim. I found that if I hit the 3 arms and moved each one an inch, then I could easily crank the lever a couple times before it got hard to crank. This process is repeated as many times as it takes to have the compressed side of the rim overlap the other side.
Hudson had a better idea
It took me awhile to understand Hudson's version of the split rim. I think if I hadn't seen the Pacific Tool wheel expander/contractor in use on the internet. Or if I hadn't seen it or purchased it, but rather made an effort to apply it to the split rim, perhaps I would have focused on the unique lever action of the split rim that is actually joined.
The cam action locking mechanism has a rectangular opening in it and I finally figured out why and that set me in a direction to build a tool to open and close the mechanism.
When I applied contracting pressure on the rim using the pacific tool I could see a slight movement on the end where the slot was and I put a pry bar in and encouraged the mechanism to move. But since I had no idea how it all worked I didn't want to apply too much pressure to anything at first.
At this point in the learning process I didn't realize that the locking mechanism was connected to both sides of the rim and that the pins were fixed in place and the mechanism rotated on those pins. The fact that the ends of the rim were fastened to the pins meant that when the rim was contracted by the Pacific Tool it forced one side of the rim to raise up and cross over the other end of the rim.
The picture above shows the locking mechanism starting to move and it is rotating counterclockwise.
The picture above shows the locking mechanism completely flipped over as far as it will go.
I kept thinking about the rectangular opening in the portion of the locking mechanism that moves as the rim opens and closes. I kept thinking that there had to be a specific tool that Hudson had designed for the purpose of compressing and expanding the rim. After a few fabrications I came up with a very simple tool that when used with one hand easily and effortlessly contracts and expands the rim in one smooth motion so I think Hudsons tool was quite similar to what I built.
However the Pacific Tool is a very clever design. It's just not designed for the Hudson split rims.
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