DUNLOP D1 WHEEL NUTS A pictorial guide to making your own

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1 DUNLOP D1 WHEEL NUTS A pictorial guide to making your own First, many thanks to a couple of Forumers who ve banded together to formulate this short non technical how-to article. Brought about by the constant interest and threads about these popular and still well liked wheels. It s no secret that Dunlop had a real winner on their hands with these, out selling many times over (oh yes they did..) the other sometimes cheaper brands of the era. Dunlop pressed BL hard to have these wheels and their tyres of course as a factory fitted optional extra but the finances either side could no be stretched to meet in the middle. And Michael Edwardes, who d already had his fingers burned with another wheels saga wouldn t budge. But, a large midlands dealership did offer these as a dealer fitted option together with a vinyl roof. If you need to brighten your newly restored wheels up and ditch your rusty nuts, read on The subject. One of popular Dunlop wheels, bead blasted, lacquered and awaiting the black painted segments and our new-made wheel nuts. New centres will follow later Centre the lengths of hex bar. Those good people at South West Steam and model engineering cut our length of 3/4 AF stainless bar to 35mm/1.4 + a bit lengths, the overall lengths for a 20 wheel nuts (16 + a spare set. Or in my case, errors!). Centre the bar in the lathe

2 Boring. Now bore a suitably sized pilot hole down to a depth of 1.31 Tapping drill. Pilot successfully bored, drill to that depth with an 8.5mm drill, the tapping size for our 3/8 x 24 UNF tap Face off square.

3 While the drill chuck is in the tail-stock, mount the 3/8 x 24 UNF taper start tap in the chuck and HAND START the thread, This way you know that the thread is dead square to the work and will make it easier to start later. The wheel locators. Now we can start the real turning! Hopefully better than the poor quality shown here but I blame it on the camera angle! This locator for the wheel of should be.622 diameter to a depth/length of.560. Note the small chamfer at each end of the locator. Not clearly shown is the slight countersink at the entry to the 3/8 thread. We did all 20 wheel nuts to this spec and only then started at the other end, as you ll see next Finishing the hexagon. It was a simple matter to hold the round locator part in the lathe chuck and turn the hex

4 part down to give us a total length of 1.38, give or take a bit. The cutting tool is set at the approx. angle to best replicate the slight curvature on the original Dunlop nuts. If you want to grind a tool to suit the exact curvature, feel free of course. The next part of the exercise was to fully tap the 20 nuts to 3/8 UNF. Much easier when you have already started the threading in the lathe as shown in picture 006 Nearly there. There you go, a new-made nut on a slave wheel stud. Notice that there is a small.2 reduced diameter where the locator part joins the hexagonal. This in order that the washers (next) can rotate freely and, should you want to replicate the original Dunlop nuts, can stake the washers to ensure that that remain fixed to but rotate on the nuts. The washers or collars next. Readily available from our good friends at South-West Steam, 1.1 or 28mm 303spec stainless bar (we used 1 for availability). But do NOT ask them to cut this to the 16 (or 20) lengths required because these collars have to be exactly parallel for good sound mechanical reasons. Centred in the lathe and bore through with a pilot drill. So cut/part them off in the lathe!

5 Bore. Drill in with a.625 drill and face off. You ll see now that the washers or collars are a nice sliding fit over the locator parts of the nuts. We used a scraper to put a very slight chamfer into the inside edge and a 45 degree cutter to chamfer the outer, outer edge starting.1 up or halfway around the outer edge as shown in photo 012/13. Now chamfer and part-off as you go until you ve got 16 or 20 nice shiny collars There it is, one of the 20 stainless* wheel nuts and collars. Note the slight recess that will allow you to stake the collar slightly to retain it to the nut. We didn t bother! * The astute will immediately see that this nut and collar are not stainless, but mild steel simply for speed while photographing.