INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD L. RADER
February 2005
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Richard’s company Rader Wheels is credited for supplying Barris’ Batmobile with its rims. Richard is a 1/4 German and his original name was Von Rader. Räder in German means WHEEL. Rader gave all wheels for Barris’ cars free for many years. This included Sonny & Cher's twin Mustang’s, the Munster Koach, ZZR from “Out of Sight” and many others. Richard say's this was great advertising for him!
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Richard: Bat Wheels
were 15X7 rims that were reversed.
E:
How do you reverse a rim? It seemed the rims were "deep"
on the Batmobile
R: Yes, we made the
deep look for the Bat car. This is accomplished by reversing the Rim.
E:
Were they tri-rib or single rib?
R: Wheel spoke was
the original first wheel I designed. It had a single rib in the
center of each of the 5-spokes.
E:
Did they have a trim ring around the rim or was the entire rim one-piece?
R: Rims were
polished/chrome plated with NO trim rings.
Rader only made two one piece cast aluminum wheels. One was a cast Magnesium dragster wheel 16X13 (Superlite Rader) and a one piece cast aluminum car wheel 14X6.
You can't make a
steel wheel rim easy; it takes about $300,000 DLS for the equipment.
We purchased all our rims from Norris Themidor in Los Angeles,
E:
Were the Bat-spinners on the rims cast aluminum or cut out of a flat
aluminum sheet?
R:
The original Bat Knock-off was designed and made by Rader. It was
cool, cast out of aluminum, it was concave. After our split he (Barris)
made them out of flat aluminum.
E:
Do you have images of the original design for the batknock-off? How
were they affixed? Bolted on...epoxy?
R: I don't have any
drawings of any products.
The Bat knockoff
fastens on the same as any of Rader knock-offs. The Knock-off has a 1/4x20
stud cast into the back and it screws on the wheel hub.
E:
Do you know why all the original Rader's were removed from the 4
Batmobiles in the early 70's? To this day none of the originals wear
Rader's except for the #4 car (it wears Radir’s).
R: Barris
introduced me to the head design engineers for Ford/GM/American. He was
real good to us to do this.
One day Barris said
to me, design a Rader wheel for bicycles. I did. I hand made sample cast
aluminum bike wheels. We together applied for a design patent. At
the time my company Radak Inc. was under contract to Huffy Bicycles. I
was designing bikes and accessories, (using the same Artist).
Barris was working
with Murray Bicycles and I was working with Huffy to sell them the bike
wheel. Barris behind my back, made a deal with Murray. He didn't manufacture the wheels but he got paid for the idea. Did
he share the $$, NO. We split the sheets over that. Barris removed Rader
wheels from the Bat copies, got $$ from other wheel makers to put their
wheels on the Bats.
E: Why
are some of Rader wheels stamped Mick Thompson M/T?
R: My father,
Richard I. Rader (marketing) and I Richard L. Rader (design &
manufacturing).
In the early 1960's
my father negotiated a contract with Mickey Thompson to distribute
10,000 Rader wheels. (Overall Mickey sold over 200,000 Rader
wheels.) We then moved our wheel plant from Napa
R: I don't know anyone associated with the new Radir's. I see that Cragar tried to make a Rader 5-spoke and did. The spoke is not the exact shape and looks like crap. They discontinued it.
Thanks
Richard!
