Moon Discs Courtesy of Quarter Turn Fasteners

My family raced land speed out at the Bonneville Salt Flats and as evidence of the aesthetic effect Bonneville had on me, the coupe ran Moon discs and open lakester headers for quite some time.

The streamliner’s trailer wheels ran moon discs and they used tiny little screws which eventually corroded and broke. And they each had their own instructions scribbled on the back with permanent marker (which disc belonged to which wheel, which side, what hole.) Not a super handy system. Good luck to you if you weren’t paying attention when you took the discs off to do maintenance.

To make wheel maintenance easier for the coupe, we decided to use quarter-turn fasteners for my moons. I grew up calling them Dzus buttons. They’re also known as quarter-turn fasteners, which is how Speedway refers to them.

We created a circular template to evenly space the quarter-turn fastener tabs on the wheels. Each wheel would be able to accept any of the spun discs. And even spacing would give the moons a finished look.

Start with your wheel (imagine this wheel freshly sandblasted):

The circular template we made fits the inside diameter of the wheel's lip and holds a metal tab which has been dzus-ed to the template. We made our own metal tabs, but Speedway now sells a kit with weld-able tabs, pop rivets and fastener springs – everything you need for this project, except for our homemade circular template.

When the template is in place, it leaves space for you to tack weld the metal tab onto the sandblasted wheel in the right spot. Once tack welded, we removed the quarter-turn fastener holding the tab to the template and finished welding the tabs to the wheel. Then we powder coated the wheels.

You should also use the circular template to mark the quarter-turn fastener holes to drill into the moon disc. Punch, drill and then de-burr the holes.

After the wheels were powder coated, we installed the springs onto the back on our metal tabs with two pop rivets. You may need to bend the new tabs in or out so the quarter-turn fastener can reach the spring behind the new tab. The fastener buttons come in several different lengths as well.

Now, all four wheels can use any of the four discs. And it's worth all the work and fuss because the end result looks great and will save you time reinstalling the discs after tire maintenance.