[flyingtim01]

I'm going to echo all the sentiments here...my uncle had a '51 3800 wrecker that I bought from him when I was younger, and I remember filling up the tires with a regular air chuck from his compressor, until he saw what I was doing. He came running out of his garage and screamed at me, gave me the 'suicide rim' lecture and handed me an inflator with a safety chuck on the end of it. He told me to stand way back, off to the side of the tire, if I insisted on airing up the tires. A few months later, he found me a set of 8 lug 16.5" rims off some van that replaced the split rims.

Needless to say, when I found the '71 K20, it had the original split rims as well, and although I loved the look of the bias ply snows it had all the way around, there was no way I was fooling around with those split rims. They went to transfer station, tires and all, and got swapped out for a set of Ford steelies & Hankooks from an ambulance, also courtesy of my uncle.