Fiat Roosevelt "Libre" Wheels
"Backyard Style"

This article covers some of the information about FR/ARE center caps that has been floating around on the internet. I have a picture of an ARE center cap here. You can see that they are different from the FR caps with a hex design on a round base. Either cap will, however, fit either wheel as the mounting holes in the wheels are similar. Actually both the ARE/FR wheels are extremely similar in construction with the exception of the cast in FIAT ROOSEVELT lettering on the backside of the wheel and the placement of the valve stem. The FR valve stems are in the center of the spokes on the inside of the rim. The ARE stems are on the outer rim facing slightly outward. The AR stems are decidedly easier to fill with air than the FR stems, but the FR stems are less noticeable and less subject to damage. Recently I've seen stem placement on both wheels in both places, so this may be an indication of whether the wheels were early or late manufacture rather than which series. Here is a picture of an AR wheel recently sold on eBay. You can clearly see the cap on the ARE wheel is hex in shape.

Alvon Elrod has been working on a set of ARE/FRE wheels independently. They are polished, painted and tires are mounted. He has also done some careful measurement of the two different styles of wheels and has come up with some striking differences. There are pictures of his progress and some additional information about the differences that he has documented with his wheels here.

About the caps... Most sources for the caps have all but dried up. I know, I've checked. I purchased two caps from Chris Obert used and two caps from Canadan that were mint new. The picture is of the mint new cap. Chris was charging $25 a piece for used ones (I bought his last two). And they were in really "used" condition. I found two brand new ones that Dan had in Canada and had him send them to me. I'm trying to duplicate the "look" of the original while improving the wearability of the cap. Bruce Matthews at the Bin has some nice black Fiat logo stickers that fit well in the center recess of the stock caps, and this might be an option on the reproductions. An example of the black cap is above.

The caps are made of plastic with a bright chrome plating. There is a single screw that goes through a metal circular plate that is on the inside of the wheel. The screw passes through the hole in the plate, the wheel, and then screws into the plastic cap to hold it to the wheel. The plastic is subject to damage from tire tools and the screw hole stripping out. The plating on plastic is.... well you know how durable chrome on plastic is. The top of the cap is recessed with about an 1.5" flat area that contains a red/chrome sticker disk with the fiat logo. The red sticker lasts only about a year outdoors and becomes a blank shiny chrome sticker rather quickly. There are two concentric rings outside the stick on that are raised.

The idea is to have a machinist create the plastic cap in bar stock in aluminum or stainless steel. None of this should be difficult to reproduce. I won't know what they will cost until I meet with him and go over the project. The way the CNC machine works is that all the expense is in the programming. The cap has to be measured and rendered on the computer. Then the dimensions are downloaded to disk and loaded into the milling machine. The aluminum is only a couple of bucks! The more that I have made will really bring down the price of the center caps.

The machinist is retired and a car nut, and likes to do this sort of project. He does charge $50 an hour for his involvement, but he is good and doesn't mind putting in a lot of value added touches. For example The setup charge for the bolts was $90 and he only charged me $50 to do all 16 bolts. Additional bolts will only cost $3 a bolt. The setup information is stored on a disk for the CNC machine. He had to purchase a special chuck for his lathe to chuck up the hex heads so they could be accurately machined.

This was going to be my winter project for the car. The wheel caps were on hold for a while, but there has been some interest from others in putting a couple of sets together, so I'm ready to go down there and rattle his cage to make some up. I still have a couple of wheels to restore and polish. Then a set of Goodrich 205 s need to be mounted and balanced. The budget is taking a bit of a hit here and will take a while to recover. Everyone should have a new set of caps before Christmas 03. Happy holidays!

I've had a couple of people ask about how the cap is attached to the wheel, so here's a picture of the back of an original cap. Not really much to see. There is a 5/16" plastic post in the middle tapped for a machine screw and three smaller posts dividing the circumference in thirds to help center the cap in the hole. The metal plate goes on the back and is held in place with the machine screw. My theory as to why all the caps are gone is that the plastic center post splits from age and stress and the screw lets go and the cap falls off. The replacement caps are solid aluminum and are tapped for a 10-24 bolt. The disk will do the centering job nicely.

The new caps look exactly like the old caps except as I mentioned before, they are solid aluminum and near indestructible. Overall they hey look better than expected. Jim did beautiful work. Above is a group shot of them with the decal sheet. Directly above is the aluminum blank right after machining, and to the right is a picture of the new cap with the stock FR plastic cap. The new cap is just as bright as the plastic one, even before it is polished ,as the chrome plated plastic. The dimensions of the new cap are within +-.0015" Close enough for a wheel cap.

The backing plate is zinc coated steel with a stainless 10-24 bolt rather than the self tapping screw of the original. The concentric rings are there as is the subtle taper of the sides. In every way this is identical to the original. Below is a picture of the new cap alongside the original. As you can see, they are identical in appearance, though no one who hold both in their hands will be fooled. All that is left to do is reproduce the sticker and tap the bolt hole in the back and they are ready to be sent out. Congratulation all of you that bought them.

If you are interested in a reproduction set, click here and it will take you to the reproduction bolts and caps page for pricing and delivery information.