center capped alloy wont fit over o.e. dust cap

[oc92]

i just got some pedrinni alloys and tried to put them on my stock hub and stock grease dust cap 914 but the center cap doesnt allow enough room for the dust cap to enter. i'm keeping the grease caps on but wanted to know if anyone else has seen this...

[TomInVegas]

What year 914 are you trying to put Pedrinni's on? They were put on 72 and earlier 914's that have a different rotor than the 73 and later 914's. I have Pedrinni's on my 74 but had to customize a standard four bolt wheel spacer to make them work. I simply cut out two parts of the spacer where my bolts would go with a cutoff wheel in my dr~mel tool, actually a b-d wisard (sp) . I wouldn't recomend using this setup for any autocrossing or hard street driving. In fact, if someone wanted to trade a set of Mahle's for my Pedrinni's I would be intrested.

[oc92]

good point. i think the big prob is that my center caps are after market. not a big deal, i have some really thin-walled caps that i can tap on instead... but i only have 2... anyone have some thin caps for sale? vw grease caps are not so "tall" so i may check the parts yard with calipers in hand.

[TomInVegas]

I don't think that the caps are the problem. The boss for the wheel bearing in the rotor is much taller on the later rotors. The later alloy wheels (Mahle's and Fuch's)are machined to allow this boss to extend into where the metal was in the earlier wheel. If you can find a copy of the 914 restorers guide, there was one at my local library, there is a picture of what I'm talking about. If you try to mount the wheels and then remove them you should see a ring around the inside the wheel where the outer edge of the boss makes contact whith the inside of the wheel. This means that the only contact between the hub part of the rotor and the wheel is very, very small and only in a narrow ring. The wheel spacers that I'm using greatly expand the contact area, but it also causes the wheels to be spaced slightly wider which might cause tire clearance problems when using wider tires. But the Pedrinni's look great and I got them for a song at a wrecking yard.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

BTW, there are late-style Pedrinis. They came on some 73 model-year cars, and have a part number with a suffix of "01", rather than "00" for the early Pedrinis. The late ones fit 73+ hubs correctly.

--DD

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Pelican Parts 914 Tech Support

A few pics of my car: http://www.pelicanparts.com/gallery/Dave_Darling

[TomInVegas]

Thanks Dave, I stand corrected. I should have said that the picture in the restorer's guide did in fact show both the early and late style Pedrinni's. It showed that the difference was the machining to allow for the 73+ rotors. By the way, do you know how hard it would be to have the old ones machined? If practical I would like to get this done so that I can throw the spacers away cause I really like the Pedrinni's. If not, then I'll look for someone to trade me some Mahle's for them. Any takers?

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

I don't know how easy or hard it would be to do the machining. I sold a set of early Pedrinis a number of years ago to someone with a later car. I told them about the problems fitting them, but they said they'd just get them machined. I told them I didn't think it was a very good idea, but I'd take their money if they really wanted to try it.

I still don't think it's a great idea, unless the 73 Pedrinis were actually machined--that they didn't change the casting molds or some such.

--DD

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Pelican Parts 914 Tech Support

A few pics of my car: http://www.pelicanparts.com/gallery/Dave_Darling