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Wheel Spacers-thoughts, safety?

50K views 53 replies 27 participants last post by  Amyxu 
#1 ·
Thinking about putting wheel spacers on with the stock tires. Anyone have it done or any concerns? Just want to widen the stance up a little bit!;)
 
#5 ·
I have lug nut guy brand. Check the wrangler forums for recommended btands and reviews. Anything that goes wrong with spacers are usually cause by the person who installed them.

Just make sure the they are hub centric to the car and if possible to the wheels as well. But the wheels arent as important as the car. If the wheels use acorn style nuts then they will center the wheel for you.

You can get spacers under 1" but i recommended getting extended lugs if you do. If you go 1" or more than the spacer will come with another set of lug bolts installed on them.

Check out my post about me attemping to put on some new wheels and tires. I covered alot of this on there. You can also see how the stock size tire fit and looks.
 
#9 ·
Here is more info on spacers
http://www.jeeprenegadeforum.com/fo...railhawk-edition/12058-wheels-tire-specs.html


Most cars from factory, the wheels sit inside of the fender. People who use spacers like to have the wheels flush with the fender. For cosmetic reasons.

If you get the wrong offset on a new set of wheels. Spacers helps correct it. Every car has a different stock offset, so one wheel might not fit the same on two different cars. Always research what offset you would like before purchasing new wheels.

Any spacers under 1" or 25mm or 2.5cm is installed by sandwiching it between your hub/rotor and the wheel. It utilizes the original lug bolts and nuts. Extended lug bolts may be needed if you are using spacers under 1".




Spacers 1" and larger will utilize a new set of lug bolts. So you would mount the spacers onto the hub/rotor using the original lug bolts and nuts. You may need to cut the lug bolts shorter to insure that when the wheels in mounted to the spacer, it is mounted flush. Once the spacer is mounted to the hub/rotor, you mount the wheel to the spacers new set of lug bolts. Make sure you get the pattern you wish to use to match the wheels you wish to use on the spacers new set of lug bolts.




If you are using spacers 1" and larger you can also change the bolt pattern to utilize the wheel you wish to use. The Renegades bolt pattern is 5x110. There isn't many wheels out there for us to use because this is a uncommon size in the USA. So using a spacer that bolts onto the 5x110 and changes the new bolt pattern to 5x114 will open up the available wheels choices we can make. Especially the offroad style wheels that are available to the Jeep Wranglers.

Wheel spacers can let you use wider wheels with wider tires. Without a spacer you may experience the wheel or tire rubbing your strut tube or spring perch. In the case of the Renegade, the spacer moves the wheel out away from the spring perch allowing for a slightly larger tire diameter. Without the spacer the tire may rub the bottom of the spring perch.

For offroading people prefer the look of a wider stance. The wider stance also gives the car better balance by lowering the center of gravity. Helps when you are at all kinds of weird angles when you are offroading. So the wheels usually stick out half way out of the fenders. Look at any Jeep Wranglers for an example.

Most offroading enthusiasts also recommend that for every inch you lift your vehicle, you should widen it as well. This is to do with the center of gravity again. When you lift the vehicle up 1" then the center of gravity also moves up. You can compensate it by moving the wheels out 1".
 
#16 ·
I'm looking at doing a 2 inch thick 5x110 to 5x110 spacer for the stock tires (Source: http://www.performancewheeladapters.com/lugmanusa-life-time-adapter-build-your-own-5x110mm/).

Other than installing them correctly, should I be worried about anything else?

2" is a lot. A thing to note when spacing the wheels further out, it changes the clearance you have when turning the wheel to full lock. The contact points change on the front and back of the tire.

I used BFG 215/75/R15 Mud tires which come out to the same size as the Trailhawk's wheel/tire combo. When I spaced these out by 1", I'm getting slight contact at the back of the wheel against the plastic fender well trim when I'm at fully turning the steering wheel. The front of the tire still have plenty of room.

When I used a wider and larger diameter tire, Kenda 235/75/R15, I get a lot of contact in the rear. Not only the plastic fender well trim, but also the end of the side skirt. I also have contact in the front of the tire against the plastic fender well trim.

So stock tires with a 1" spacer gave me slight contact already. 2" will give you similar if not more contact than my setup with the Kenda 235 with a 1" spacer. You might actually be hitting the outside edge of the fender on the back side of the tire at full wheel turning lock.

With the BFG 215 I was test fitting. Once I saw I could get more room under there, I skipped the 225 because it was already proven to fit and tried a size larger with the Kenda 235. A thing I notice with the 215 (or stock Trailhawk) tires is that they are very thin. In stock form they suit the Renegade well. Spaced out 1" the Renegade's stance looks like it's standing on toothpicks. The size of the car and the gap between the tire or the gap between the inside of the tire to the inside of the fender doesn't look right to me. So I filled in with a thicker tire. A skinny 215 tire at 2" out wouldn't look right to me. Use the outside edge of the fender as a reference point and figure the ratio of tire you want on both sides of that reference point. About 25% of the tire past the fender and 75% of the tire tucked inside of the fender is what does it for me.
 
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#14 ·
They will increase the load on any wheel bearings, just as will drastically changing the offset by choosing a different wheel. How much that will impact the service life of your bearings is really dependent on how over built/over engineered the vehicle is in that regards, and how the vehicle is driven.

Replacement can be pretty cheap though, especially if you can DIY replace the items, so people do it anyway.

Keep in mind though, the wear issue is about changing the length of the lever applying force to the bearing. If I keep wheel/tire width the same, but I put on a wheel with negative offset relative to stock wheels, I lengthen that lever and increase load. If I put on wheels that are wider, have relative negative offset to stock, and a wider tire, but the relative negative offset is 50% of the additional tire width, the length of the lever is essentially the same.

I had an eclipse. I went form 215 tires to 235 tires and put on wheels with different offset than stock. The net result was that I changed the position of the centerline of the tire less than 5%. I put 168k miles on that car without going through any wheel bearings. The recommendation I got form someone who put a lot more after-market tires and wheels on a lot more cars than I did was that keeping tha change to 10% or less would likely not impact wear too badly.
 
#15 ·
I agree with Raz-O. Wheel bearing life could be affected as they are subjected to a shear force and changing the point at which that is applied could have a negative impact. As to everything inside the hubs, I couldn't see that changing or picture it doing any damage to those components unless failing bearings were not caught/ignored.
 
#28 ·
Still trying to determine if I want to specifically go with a set of rims that have a different offset - so that I can avoid the extra piece of hardware.

Figure for every piece of hardware you add, it's another piece of the puzzle that can cause problems.

If you go with a wheel that has a 40mm offset (stock is 40mm) and a 10mm spacer are you introducing the same functional differences to your wheel bearings, hubs, transaxles, what-not as if you were to just go with a wheel that has a 30mm offset?
 
#32 · (Edited)
If all weights are the same and the rotational mass is the same, from the wheel bearing's perspective there is no difference.

Whole different story if static and rotational mass are different. IIRC, rotational mass increases exponentially with speed. Any increase would mean more stress on the bearings, but it's not an overnight affair. Wear will be accelerated, but damage will take time to manifest.

To me a bigger worry is the fact that you are introducing additional variables. Like for the case of the 1" spacers... where they are bolted to the hub with their own bolts, and then your wheels are held on to the spacer via another set of bolts. Should any of the bolts holding the spacer to the hub fail, or should the spacer itself fail... that could be a pretty big deal. If I was to run spacers that big, I would check them every few months just for peace of mind. Smaller spacers sandwiched between the wheel and hub via longer bolts, that's a little less to worry about.
 
#33 ·
Thanks all for the replies. For now I am just going to order a set of Yokohama Geolandar A/T-S 225/65/R17. No spacer needed. I will worry about that in the future if I decide to go bigger with a lift kit. And also thanks to Hypocrite for testing these tires for us!
 
#34 ·
With a lift you might not even need spacers to clear larger tires (235). Spacers are really for spreading out the foot print for a wider stance/looks. Hopefully, as time goes on, the aftermarket wheel scene will catch up and provide wheel options that take the place of spacers. I am really not a fan of spacers as wide as 1", but there are worse things.
 
#37 ·
Oh no, I was young and impulsive once upon a time as well. So I know all about money wasted on unnecessary addons.

When I lifted my '98 XJ almost 7 inches it was definitely "top heavy" - which I eventually improved with different wheels and wider tires.

With my Renny though, I have no intention of slapping on thousands of dollars of addons. I already know what type of off-pavement fun I'll be seeing, and there's no reason to try to turn it into something it's not. :)
 
#38 ·
From other posts and findings... 225 will fit with or without a 1" spacer on a 16" or 17" wheel.

I haven't seen anyone saying that a 235 will fit without rubbing with any setup.

My setup with the 15" wheel required grinding of the caliper. Had nothing to do with the width of the tire or the spacer. A proper 16" or 17" wheel will no require grinding of the caliper.

My 235 on 15" wheels and a 1" spacer was 50% useable on the front of the car. Which is unuseable in my book. I changed it out for some 215 for now.

The 235 on 15" wheels and a 1" spacer on the rear of the car, I found rubs mildly on the top of the fender when offroading and compressing the suspension fully.
 
#39 ·
Wheel spacers safety

I'm reading that sandwich type wheel spacers like the ones from madness Autoworks and Renegade Ready maybe dangerous,even though they are hub centric and come with longer lug bolts,but I can't find any reason why they would not be safe,only that people say they are.
What makes them dangerous? What type of failures happen with them?
 
#40 ·
I'm reading that sandwich type wheel spacers like the ones from madness Autoworks and Renegade Ready maybe dangerous,even though they are hub centric and come with longer lug bolts,but I can't find any reason why they would not be safe,only that people say they are.
What makes them dangerous? What type of failures happen with them?
The spacers in question :
 

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#41 ·
It's not the spacer it self as much as the way a spacer is put on that makes them dangerous
A wheel adaptor or spacer needs to be put on and torqued
Then the wheel
Driven and the wheel spacer needs to be retorqued and wheel put back on
Then driven and wheel retorqued
If not they can come lose
 
#44 ·
Not to mention they need to engage the hub lip, and have their own hub lip for the wheels to engage on so as not to make the lug bolts do all the work.

Then you get to offset and increased force on the bearings and how much they shorten bearing life.

Then you add the wheel and tire you put on. Bigger wheels and tires add mass. Put it out at the end of a spacer and the load and lever is greater.
 
#46 ·
Always go with a Hub Centric spacer as opposed to Lug Centric or you’ll have problems. Been running a 2” spacer on my Yukon for a couple years now without issues (re-torque them every tire rotation). I think I have 1” on the Renegade for about a year. Eventually I’d like to put new wheels on with the correct offset to achieve the same stance and get rid of the spacers, but not ready to drop that kind of cash.
 
#47 ·
I should add that I downsized the OEM Yukon wheel from 20” to aftermarket 17” which shaved a lot of weight and I really don’t drive it that much. I’ve always been a little wary of wheel bearings needing to be replaced sooner than later with spacers, but am ready to replace when the time comes. ;)
 
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