[Omathisen]

Not wanting to do any further damage, I took the wheels to race car engineer my son knows this Saturday. He took one look at the wheels, put them upside down, and tapped out the center. Took all of five seconds.
I got sidetracked by the original mechanic and the threads and did not help that Compomotive did not answer my inquiries.
The engineer told me that he could tell that the threads were "outside" and did not go into the center of the wheel, and the "lip" inside was an optical illusion.
So that was all of 20 seconds, plus 15 more minutes to file away the scratches on the center that the first shop damaged and redoing the threads so the wingnut fits again (better than before). It sure helps when you find somebody who knows what he is doing.
So now I have two sets of good wheels.