wheel spacers

[rh71]

"safe enough" or "never on my car"?

I'm starting to re-think this one... I have 15mm front and 20mm back so they are perfectly flush with the fender flares. I drive around with 2 little kids about 75% of the time.

 

[ghost recon88]

How big are your rims?

 

[Imported]

I've been thinking about running 5mm spacers in the rear when I'm on the track or autoxing.. also thought about going 10mm, but then I'd need either extended lugs or the spacers with built in lugs. I think if done right they're safe. I know a few who track their cars a lot running anywhere from 5mm to 25mm spacers without an issue, but they're all on extended lugs as well.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Don't your tires ever rub the inside of your fenders when you go over bumps? I used to have aftermarket wheels on my car but they were slightly wider than stock and had a lower offset, and whenever I had significant weight in the back it would rub when I went over bumps.

I don't care about looking "hellaflush" and in fact I prefer the look of stock wheels anyway, so I switched back and I'm very happy.

 

[shabby]

Are the spacers hub centric? I've seen some non hub centric ones and you can see the wobble in them when they're spinning.

 

[rh71]

they are 20" and it's an SUV so there's no rub. It is hub-centric. Also, yes you will need extended lugs... which threw the wheel-locks I had out the window. 😉

Before spacers:

After spacers:

Tough to tell 15/20mm difference from pics though... I just think it looks so much better, especially in person... illusion of lower/wider stance and all that. Also wider means handling is that much better. There are people who don't think the extra stress on the suspension is worth the risk... a viable concern, but then I haven't seen any proof across the internet of catastrophic failure from having them.. that's a lot of people. I mean there are threads with incidents but mostly about loose or over-torqued bolts being the primary cause... which would have occurred with or without spacers. If there's proof out there, these would come right off.

 

[jtvang125]

I have 15mm in rear of my lexus gs400. The ones I got have their own studs so I didnt have to get longer ones. Have them for a few months now and no problems so far and I drive pretty hard. Recently did about 2 hrs of hard mountain driving and not a single issue either.

I do believe they put a little more stress on the wheel bearings than normal though.

 

[boomerang]

I crewed on a 3 car team of Corvettes for 10 years that ran SCCA when I started and the Speedvision World Challenge GT Series before I'd finally had enough. We ran wheel spacers on the cars for a number of years with zero issues. We had extended lugs too and continued to run those even after we no longer needed the spacers.