Well, I finally took the plunge after limping my 13" maypop baldies with belts showing along as long as I could, till one did pop. Just didn't want to buy any more 13s.
So after many hours of reading about 6-lug swaps here, I decided that would be the cheapest, easiest route. The problem with most of the threads here is they are all about off-roading with lifted cars. There was very, very, little I could find about doing this swap on a stock height car with low-profile tires. What little there was had no pictures anymore because of photosucket.
So I took a trip to the only pick-n-pull in the area. Really, a terrible yard, with absolutely no organization whatsoever. You have to go over the whole yard usually, just to start and see what's available. And many of the cars are so packed together, you can't even walk between them. I found one set of 15" steel Isusu 6-lugs in the offset I figured I would need. 60 bucks for the set... pretty happy about that. And they were actually going to charge me extra for the mixmatched, flat, half-bald tires that were on there (??) but they removed them for free.
Now, these wheels are well made, but HEAVY!! The center flange that I had to drill was 3/8" steel and the rest of the center was a healthy 1/4". I was gonna weigh them before I got them on the car, but I was too excited to stop and do so. Really, part of me just didn't want to know.
I was gonna hit up someone here to send me a front hub, maybe one with stripped splines, to use as a template, but I ended up just taking one of mine off, and bopping two of the studs out. I then made a drill bushing with a nut by first drilling out the threads with my pilot drill bit, and then, with the nut spinning on the pilot bit, I dressed down the OD with a right-angle grinder (shadetree lathe), till it just pushed inside the stud holes.
Bolted the hub to the wheels, drilled the pilot through the bushing, then drilled to 1/2", Bob's your uncle.
After hours of brooding over tire size, I finally settled on 205/50R15s, which are ever so slightly taller than stock, and filled out beautifully on the 7 inch rims. Wallyworld got me Hankooks for 50 bucks each, and they really look like great tires. Took hardly any weight to balance, which is a good sign for the rims and tires.
Fit without issue on the front, but it gets close in a couple of spots. The rear... was going to rub the inner fender lip under compression. I've never rolled any fenders, but I remember an old hot rodder telling me about using a baseball bat to do so. I couldn't find a full-size wooden bat anywhere locally, but I did have a piece of 2" PVC electrical conduit. Started out driving the car forward with the conduit rolling between the tire and body. With a stick and a string on the loose end of the conduit, so I could guide it (would work better with 2 people). Then finished by letting the car roll back down the driveway while levering the conduit down to push the flange up. Worked great.
Then, after some cleaning and Krylon, I can't stop looking at it!!
Now, I have yet to try and drill a chamfer on the new holes so it will accept a traditional lug nut. For now, I just have regular nuts and lockwashers on the drilled holes, and center the wheels on the car with the factory holes. It's smooth as glass at 80 mph, so I think I can go back now and chamfer the drilled holes, as long as they are perfectly centered around the stud. Or, I could just get some flat-bottom chrome acorn nuts, and leave well enough alone.