165 80 r15

Dick

Second on the location? If Schu doesn’t end up with I might grab them if you are close enough.

That’s practically down the street from me! I have the 4x130mm pattern though so unfortunately these won’t work for me… What is the donor car for your TD to have that pattern? 

I’ll handle the 14 vs 15″ question.
I run P185/75R14″ on my VW TDr. They are almost exactly the same outer diameter as 165/15″ that most VW’s run. They are slightly wider, but I doubt that they would interfere with anything.

Thanks Roy and Kent. Roy – P185/75R14 are fairly common around here and the 165/SR15s are scarce as hens teeth. Might switch to those. Still hunting rims like the original TDs with the holes rather than slots. Might end up switching drums to 5 lug and going with VW bus rims. I’ve got time yet.

My TDr had stock VW wheels when I bought it. I re-tapped the brake drums and mounted the adapters and 72 spoke wire wheels from a Triumph Stag. Everything was done by me, in my garage without fancy equipment after a lot of head scratching and worry.
One of my first steps was to appraise the trueness of my “new” wires. To do this, I bought a spare brake drum from a junkyard. Drilled it and mounted the adapter with the very special wheel nuts on the front of my TDr and checked each of the wheels, one at a time while doing some rather careful measuring with a dial indicator as I slowly rotated the wheel. (No tires were mounted.) I then measured both the maximum axial and radial runout for each wheel. They were all within specifications of (as I recall) 3/16″. (Check for a thread on this site about my conversion.)
I had had a few wire wheeled cars before and what worried me the most was possible weakening of the brake drum. The aftermarket wires most often found on TD’s and even early Healeys were 48 spoked, so with 150% more spokes, I wasn’t too concerned about wheel strength. (Condition of the adapter anywhere splinters was another matter.)
Balancing: The very most important thing here is to find a shop that knows what they are doing. You DO NOT want to entrust this job to someone that has a pneumatic tire changer that only grips the center of the explained hub. There are changers that grip the wheel on the outer perimeter – that’s what you want. The first variety will bend or break spokes. Yes, I run tubes in “tubeless” tires and at the speeds we all enjoy in our TDr’s (<~80 mph) and the reduced weight they are no problem. You will need to put a rubber band like device over the spoke nipples before mounting the tubes (otherwise you will have a very early flat tire). Have the shop that has the correct cone shaped hub do the spin balancing and you are good to go. Balancing itself is really not a problem, I always say that you can "balance" a square block of wood.
If you have any other questions, send me a PM.

Interesting that you drilled and tapped them yourself, I might consider that as I just did a front disc conversion and don’t really want to pay for another set of drums and rotors so soon! 

Since you “just did a front brake conversion” if you are using 14″ wires, you may have an interference problem. (See my disc brake conversion thread.) If you are using 15″ wires, I believe you will have no clearance problems.