Installing Moon Discs - Moon Over Steelie

As you can guess if you've never had Moons on a car, this gets to be such a colossal pain that you keep putting off checking your tires and even convince yourself "that tire's still got plenty of air left." Sounds like much ado about nothing you say, but there are other annoyances. When you attach discs to steel wheels, you can use self-tapping screws or better, drill and tap the rims for small fine-thread screws. We'll admit that small black Allen screws do look cool on a disc. Unfortunately, the rim of a steel wheel isn't that thick, so you have screws that are secured in a paltry amount of threads. One misstep in attaching the discs when you're in a hurry and you can easily strip or jam the screws. As if that weren't enough, we've seen rodders drill their wheels while the tires were still mounted, which sometimes results in a tiny air leak that eventually causes you to have to check that tire even more often. When we ran a Comp Coupe at El Mirage and Bonneville for 10 years, our road entourage sported 14 screw-secured Moon discs. There were four on our tow vehicle, four on the trailer, and six on the race car (front wheels had Moons inside and out). We carried a small, battery-powered screwdriver with an Allen bit in it just for removing Moons to check all these tires. It was easier but still a pain. With the Bonneville tires and the extreme heat, you have to keep checking for changing pressure, so the Moons on the race car weren't screwed on until just when we got near the starting line.

That's probably enough whining about disc screws. Most enthusiasts love the look of Moons enough to put up with the inconvenience. The alternative method of securing discs to steel wheels is with Bill Dzus' marvelous fastener, which for trivia fans came out the same year as another rodder-loved product, the Deuce. There is some work involved in setting up your wheels and your discs to accept the Dzus buttons, but if you're tired of removing/installing Moons that are screwed to the rims, you'll love this setup.

Another Bonneville racer you're familiar with, Roy Fjastad (Full-Bore Racing Products) sells an alternative to traditional Dzus buttons, called a Superbutton. It operates like a Dzus, but instead of a slot in the middle, these have a hex hole, so they can be turned with an Allen wrench. The advantage of using these on a race car is when fastening panels in a hurry the tool can't slip out of the button and scratch the paint. Fjastad also has a cool tool to carry around in your glovebox.