Buying wheel rims for your aircraft

My Drifter brakes are terrible. I am getting a new set of wheels, tyres and brake fittings made. The wheel rims I have sourced from Adelaide and cost 45$ AUD (6 inch) plus postage and handling. http://www.edwardskartwheels.com.au/otherproductsultralightaircraftrims/ 

Unfortunately the tyres I have on the aircraft are actually golf cart tyres and I may need wider rims (8 inch). The other thing I need to do is measure the axle size to ensure that the bearings are the right size.

There are a couple of important things to note here. Firstly, my aircraft is a a factory built strut braced drifter. This means that any modification to the aircraft requires CAR 35 Design approval by the holder of a CAR 35 instrument which really means that they are authorised by CASA to sign off design modifications to aircraft.

Even though these people are as rare as hen's teeth, it is important that any modifications are signed off. A great bit of news is that like the ASIC processing that RA-Aus provides as a service, we are working on streamlining the design change process. Here is a snippet from the technical manual in regard to modification. 

IMPLEMENTATION
3. CAO 95.55 paragraph 1.4 requires modifications to “old” CAO 95.25 aircraft to be approved by a person holding a CASA Instrument of Appointment under CAR 35. This requirement extends to ultralight aircraft types approved to qualified to CAO 101.28 and CAO 101.55 standards. Modifications to CAO 101.55 or CAO 101.28 type aircraft registered with the RA-Aus must be approved by a person holding a CASA Instrument of Appointment under CAR 35. Once approved, these modifications can be manufactured and installed by a person
holding an RA-Aus Level two Maintenance Authority. Both the manufacturer and the installer are to annotate the aircraft log book with the work they have completed, their signature, name in block letters, RA-Aus membership number and the date the entry was made.

 A side note...

We all hear stories about that one niggling design problem with a particular aircraft and in the case of the Drifter there are a few... The castor wheel used as a tailwheel rattles the you know whats out of the tail boom on any airstrip that is gravel or bitumen. The seatbelt adjustment connections are hard to adjust and work their way loose in the back seat fraying the join points to the rear support point. And the brakes... The brakes on a standard Drifter are legendary because as is, they don't work that well.

I think that if we move to a streamlined solution for submitting modifications to the owner of the aircraft type approval, there should be the ability for the clubroom comments about a particular aircraft to find their way without fear or favour to a location where they can be reviewed objectively and any that add long term benefit to pilot or aircraft should be recommended and processed. This is not a problem in the case of the newer aircraft with active manufacturers but older aircraft of the rag and wire variety can languish as there is no proactive support for imporovement by the aircraft type certificate holder.