Following up on my last post, I ran out to Frederick on Sunday to pick up a pair of NIB steel 5×4.5 wheels from a nice gentleman named Tom. After measuring the backspacing and offset, I went ahead and pulled the trigger anyway—all four were only $75—but even before I fit one on the truck as a test, I knew it wouldn’t work correctly. These wheels are 6.5″ wide, and the offset is the same as the wheels I’ve got, which means there’s an extra 2″ of wheel inboard of the hubs; this means they’re too far inward to actually mount to the truck without rubbing against the body. My initial thought was that I could buy 1″ or 2″ spacers to get them to fit, but then I’d also need longer wheel studs, and that was getting more and more expensive and time-consuming. So, I discarded that idea.

But, this did give me some good information to jump off from. These wheels are made by Dorman, and they did offer other options in this wheel pattern, but most all of the ones available are direct replacements for OEM wheels and don’t have the correct offset. Some more looking turned up a set of Wheel Vintique steelies at 16″ and 6″ wide with the correct offset; the only problem is that they’re $200/ea. So this will be a save-up-for-it thing, and I’ll keep my travels local until I can make the purchase.

In the meantime, I picked up an OEM International seatbelt retractor from a fellow on Marketplace. Darth Haul only has non-retractable lap belts, and when I got the green truck it came with two of these retractors on the back seat. They are essentially a C-shaped springloaded device that coils up the belt when it’s not buckled. I put them on Darth up front, and they do a great job of keeping the seatbelts inside the truck and away from scraping along the pavement. Of the two I inherited, one was rusty and the metal tabs that hold the belt were weak; it works, but it would be great to have two solid units up front.

I bought a new power steering pump for Peer Pressure, which will be here Tuesday; swapping this in will be part of the weekend’s chore list so that I can keep her from piddling all over the driveway. I think I’ve got the right fittings for the Hydroboost setup, but some further research is required.

On the merchandise front, I made a bunch of updates to the new T-shirt storefront at Fourthwall, which I’m happier and happier about every day. I’ve already made a bunch of sales there—the first customer, who bought a Make Scouts $500 Again shirt, wore it to the Rocky Mountain Roundup, and within a couple of days I had three more sales from Colorado. The entire setup of this storefront is so much friendlier and equitable compared to Threadless, which was pretty much a joke. I wish I’d known that earlier.

I also set up a VERY simple page at duganheavyindustries.com and built a draft page for the cupholder. I’m still finalizing some stuff, but I’m going to put a feeler post out on a couple of the Facebook groups to see if I can generate enough interest to make the initial investment—I figure 5 committed buyers should be enough to have 10 sets made, and that will recoup the costs. I sourced the shipping boxes, so the last thing I need is some way to take payment. WordPress has all kinds of e-commerce plugins available, so I’ll have to see if that’s worth the time—or if I just do Venmo and roll the dice.