Wheel size comparisons and database

others have asked in the past and I agree... it would be hugely helpful. Especially if it included axle and wheel width along with wheel height.

Such a database would be awesome...it's definitely do-able and I could certainly build something to support it here on the website, but it would need the community for data input (as usual). But even if it starts with a plain old spreadsheet, that'd be something...and that spreadsheet could be used later to populate a nicer, searchable database.

Lets figure out what data points we'd want to collect and figure out how to mix-n-match what you'd want. I bet there's only a few sizes of each thing anyway...once we settle on the possibilities with each, then it's just leg work to input.

• Wheel size (diameter)
• Wheel width (skinny, medium, fat, etc...)
• Axle length (from cap to cap)

We could even make a printable template so you just hold the car/parts up to the paper and can easily see what's what.

Well, one of the ones I have found is this:
The wheels on the Sushi Tuner will fit the following cars with no modification or hogging wheel wells:
Lethal Diesel
Pixel Shaker
Boneshaker
Speed Driver
Rodger Dodger 1.0 & 2.0

Front wheels from those cars can be fit on many of the service vehicles, such as the Rapid Response trucks.

 

The first step is just getting data and finding out what the options are. So grab like 20 cars and just start recording and sorting their wheel size, width, axle length. I'm guessing after 10 or so, you'll start seeing repeats and commonalities. Then do 10 more cars...and then 10 more...and see if you discover any sizes/lengths that you haven't yet. If not, then we've got a good starting point. Don't even worry about casting names or anything.

Next day or so I'll grab a handful from my bins and just see what I find out too. 

What we want is a somewhat definitive list of choices for each data point...so like the possible wheels sizes are A,B,C,D and the wheel widths are X,Y,Z, and the axle length choices are 1,2,3,4. Once we have all the choices, it's just a matter of grabbing a car and logging it - "Roger Dodger has wheel size A, width Z, and length 4." 

This could be something I could get into; I have around 2000 cars and I do spreadsheets for fun...

I will start getting measurements on my cars, I have old cars and I know that newer cars are narrow compared to older cars.  I will measure the inside width of the axles to see if the chassis is narrow enough.  I will post my measurements this weekend. 

I haven't verified these with my own measurements but I'll actually trust Google pretty well here...at least it's a place to start with wheel diameters and have some basic classifications. Maybe use these measures to compare with what you measure at home.

"Hot Wheels wheel sizes generally fall into small, medium, large, and extra-large categories, primarily measuring between 9 mm and 12 mm in diameter. Common sizes are 9-10mm (small), 11mm (medium), and 12mm (large), often used in staggered sets for front and rear wheels."

And for axle lengths it suggests

• Short (20mm - 22mm): Used for trucks, Kool Kombi, or deep-dish, slammed wheels.
• Medium (25mm): Standard for most cars.
• Long (28mm - 30mm): Used for wide-body cars or off-road trucks.

All needs verified but again, something you can use to compare with your own measurements and we can start to narrow down to the few choices.

I dumped out my Jar-O-Wheels and did some imprompu measuring diameters with my calipers, and with somewhat generous rounding, the results were lumped as so:

• 7mm (tiny, skate wheels - rare)
• 9mm (small - rareish)
• 11mm (medium/normal - common)
• 12.5mm (large - common)
• 14.5mm (xlarge - rarer)
• 17mm (super large - rare)

And they line-up pretty close to what Google threw out too. I'm sure there are maybe some weirdo one-off sizes that came out over the years when they tried to get creative...?...dunno, but these six measurements might be plenty to start with when considering diameters.

Do your own measurements line up with these?

And just putting this here for my own reminder, the columns for any sort of sheet/table would likely be

• Front diameter
• Front width
• Front axle
• Rear diameter
• Rear width
• Rear axle
• Casting
• Year

Decided to keep going...took the same sample of wheels from the jar and measured the width of the wheels and the axle lengths. I have no doubt there are other axle length sizes, certainly some shorter ones, but my jar was rather free of those. Anyhoo...just more numbers that could be options...lets see what y'all find in your stashes.

Wheel widths

• 2.5mm (skinny)
• 4mm (small skates)
• 4.5mm (smalls)
• 5mm (normal common)
• 7mm (fat drag width)
• 7.5mm (xlarge trucks)

The diffs between 4-4.5 and 7-7.5 might be negligible and just due to hub cap decorations that contributed to the measurement - I wasn't that careful - 4.5mm and 7.5mm might be the easiest to use.

Axle lengths

• 21mm (most narrow I had)
• 25mm
• 28mm (common)

I was generous in the 25mm rounding...some where 24.7ish and others 26.3ish, but again, I wasn't that careful and some of those axle could have had bends or not been as straight, contributing to the differences. 25mm is likely the easiest number to circle around.

Wow, thank you very much RLD for jumping into this so quickly and throughly!  It is appreicated by me and i'm sure will be very useful!  Just curious are you measuring all Hot Wheels brand wheels or are you measuring Matchbox also?  It seems you have made a lot of ground on this so as not to just redo what you have done, I will start on older cars mainly 70's and 80's for measurements, as this was one of the main reasons for me asking this question in the first place.  I want to make racing cars with old bodies and newer wheels and I found that often new wheels -especially axle width- are too narrow for the older cars.  Maybe this is more of a "me" issue as many people here tend to work in current cars, but all in the interest of making fast cars!

Thanks again RLD and Maniac Motorsports for jumping in on this!

Jim @Sunshine City Garage

Just so you can see what's in my head with this thing...outside of just a spreadsheet...I see the lookup on the website offering a few ways to find stuff. One way could be to just list cars that have the specified size/width/axle you're looking for - or any combination thereof. Just want to find cars that have fat width tires? Great, here they are. Want cars that have fat width tires with short axles? Boom, there you go.

The other method that I thought could be helpful is just looking up the casting you're dealing with and it can list cars that would be good donors. Say you have a Bone Shaker and want to find castings that come with the size/width/axle combo that matches...just type in "Bone Shaker" and it'll list all the matches that could be helpful.

Once there's a good population of data, it could be pretty awesome. The big catch is obviously the data. It'll have to build up over time as people submit their own findings. And then you get into talks about how to govern it, update it, clean, revise...all that fun stuff. But that's a Future Us problem. Right now we have nothing so first step is to just find some common ground and starting inputing.