The original Tumbler used a ford 9 inch rear end with what I assume is spacer/ adapters since the vehicle is like 9 1/2 feet wide. The maximum width of a vehicle is suppose to be under 8 1/2 feet to be legally driven on the highway. My first axle was from a 98 Camaro and was insanely too weak even if I were to truss it out. The steel wheel with the 44 inch TSL tires weighed about 175lbs each. When I put them on the axle it was obvious the axle housing was too weak and the wheel bearings were too small. So I had a custom axle built which uses a floating axle design where the axle has a spindle and the hub has two sets of bearings per side to handle the added weight.

My original rims I had fabricated were 15" x 15" wide steel rims. The rims made the wheel balloon out too much and was obvious it wasn't the right size. But hey back in the day we were all guessing. The biggest problem with my first set of rims was the backspacing. The rims were made to convert a regular truck to a dually and although the tires fit the tires were contacting each other when they were mounted, Problem with that is it generates heat which can prematurely aging of the tire and possibly cause a blowout. Another big issue is this dually set used an adapter which was forged aluminum. That process is weaker than say billet aluminum and with that much weight on each side there was a possibility of failure on the adapter.

So my final set of custom fabricated rims used two dually rims to create one rim. The back spacing which is the difference from the back of the rim to the mounting face was a negative backspacing and the rims went to !6 1/2" to 12 inches wide which was perfect. It allowed a gap of 1 1/2 inches between the tires and my wheel mounting plates touched and mounted directly to the hub with no under' "bat builder" if you want to follow my current builds or just say Hi. Good luck in your build and may the force be with you....Big Wave Dave