widening a steel rim?

so, can i take a rim cut it and weld in let say, an extra inch can i widen my wheels? my dad says that's what they used to do with sleepers, should i attempt this or does it have to be precision?
i am great at welding and i can work with the metal, i just don't wanna make it slighty off and ruin everything, any advice?

You will need it to be precise or the fluctuations in the bead will have the tire set funny. You would also need to make sure it is either airtight or babies-ass smooth and run tubes.

The effects of being less-than-accurate are exponential at speed. If this is a low-speed rig, go for it with little fear. If your butt depends on it at high-speed, find another way. Also-

Do you really need to widen your rims by an inch? You'd be surprised what size tires you can mount on what rims. Many of us- including myself- have no problems running 22x11-8 ATV rubber on stock rear mower rims.

What have you got planned?

I got 21x12x8 on rims ment for 18x9x8

i like the look of the slightly steched look of the tires on a race mower using kart rims but i don't have the cash to buy them yet so i was hoping i could cut and weld in extra, but if it has to be exact i'll leave them alone

It can be done but it will take some time and skills.

We did it in a machine shop class that I took and it was a "pita" and that was with the right tools for the job.
 We used a lathe with the rim mounted on the chuck, cut just about all the way through the rim, then finished cutting it with a hacksaw.  We cleaned up the cut edge with the lathe to give it a nice square edge to work with.  Then we measured the diameter and  material thickness, and figured out what the circumference was.  Sheared a strip of sheetmetal that was the same thickness as the rim, to the width that we needed to widen the rim to.  It was sent through a roller till it became the same diameter that the rim was.  Mounted it in another lathe and squared up the one edge, then put a little chamfer on the rim and the widening strip for the weld.  With all sorts of magnets we got the widening strip mounted up to the rim and hand spun the lathe with a dial indicator setup ot make sure every thing was level and true to each other.  Welded it in side and out then did all the clean up steps again with the other edge and the other rim piece that was cut off.  After it was welded on we turn the lathe on and used some tooling to cut the welds down almost flush with the surface. The final step was to use a little air sander to finish the clean up then they were painted.   These were 14 or 15 in car rims

 
I couldn't imagine doing it with basic tools and getting good results or even an air tight rim that runs true and stright.  Plus grinding the inside of an small diameter rim and making it look good would suck.


You can mount wider tires on narrow rims, the main thing that happens when you do this is the tire will have a rounder foot print than a flatter one.

On my truck when I took it to get different tires put on it they were not wanting to do it because my rims were 8  1/4in wide (I think)  and the tires were 12  1/2  wide.  They said I needed at least a 10 in wide rim for these tires.  After telling them that I would put them on myself and be back for balancing they did it. I have had no problems with them and that's doing 60mph turns with a 6000 lb truck.

So what I'm saying is if you got a couple of inches different between tire and rim width  just go for it.  Now if your trying to fit a 12in wide tire in a 6in wide rim don't do it get a different wheel.  And if you got the ambition and time go ahead and cut up a test rim first, then go from there.

could probably done, but not something i would want to do.. if your weld has the slightest weakness, it could un-buton itsself. plus it has to be airtight if you run tubeless. i'd just get wider tires

If you are only going an inch or even two, don't bother widening the rim. If you need to go more than that, widening is not that bad to do. You don't need to butt weld the extra steel in between the two rim halfs, you can use wider steel and overlap the gap. The spacing between the bead lips is the onlything that needs to be kept at a reasonable tolerance around the rim. I have cut the rim to leave the hub part attached to the part closest to the vehicle, cut a tube or make a tube that fits between the two parts and weld it in.

i have a lathe at my disposal, i can buy plenty of magnets, i can tig weld and i have worked with sheet metal plenty before, i do have plenty of extra rims if i really want to try, so now i'm just wondering if i should take the chances or not.

i wan't them to look like this:


just a slight strech to the tires

nah, i wouldnt.. too much to go wrong. if you REALLY want it, i'd just look around for some cheap wheels. check on BMI karts

to get the rims and the hubs and such it would cost me around $250, so i think i'll just leave them alone then

probably your best bet