Wheel spacers

Hey guys,

someone please help me out here, are wheel spacers very effective? what are their drawbacks? my car is front wheel drive and it's a preety narrow small car... so I thought of adding wheel spacers to increase the stability.

Thanks.

Reply to
Brian Su
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:)

Reply to
Tony Bond

It alters the forces on the suspension, so it might bugger things up.

Reply to
Doki

Not a very good solution - you're putting the unsprung weight further out, putting the hub/suspension under more stress. In what way do you want to make it more stable? What car do you actually own?

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

Reply to
Brian Su

It is...

Reply to
Doki

Yes, unless your offered a second-hand set of 2 month old 17's for half price, in which case it doesn't matter so much :)

-- Chet

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Reply to
Chet

Hehe, never a truer word spoken in jest and all that.

Reply to
Lordy

Except they will be so hot they will melt the tyres and boil the grease out of the wheel bearings.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Reply to
Peter Hill

Yes it is, but if you fitted say 50mm spacers then went to choose a rim with the right offset you'd have one with something like 10mm which would put the wheel center line back where it was without the spacer. So a total waste of time.

Mentioning wheel spacers sounds like you;'ve been down to Motorworld / the pub too much.

Tim..

Reply to
Tim (Remove NOSPAM. Registry corupted, reformated HD and l

Wheel spacers are usually used to stop the alloy fouling on the arch/suspension components when wider wheels are fitted - or to get the correct offset for wheels which arent the correct offset for that car.

Stability will not really be increased by spacing the wheels, far better to lower the car a bit to lower the centre of gravity, fit sports suspension to reduce body roll, possibly a strut brace to reduce body flexing and wider wheels to increase traction, although there are negative effects aswell as postive ones to fitting these items...

HTH

Ben

Reply to
Ben Organ

Wheel spacers are effective, yes.

Drawbacks include the steering not working and the bearings being shafted* about every thousand miles. The handling will become interesting, not just because the steering will become all strange and unbalanced, but the car will bounce up and down quite a lot at the front.

In short - don't, it won't do you any favours.

(* - literally, "done with a shaft".)

Reply to
antispam

*cough* bollocks *cough* :)
Reply to
Lordy

Not the ones i'm talkin about. Credit card bill = bargain for chet :)

-- Chet

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Reply to
Chet

Eh ?

Spacers are fitted as a last resort, to "adjust" (read : decrease) the offset of your wheels. They have LOTS of drawbacks, so you don't fit them unless you HAVE to.

What do you drive ?

Reply to
Nom

They are.

Yep.

Wrong offset leads to bad things ! You can get away with a small difference ( +/- 5mm or so ) without noticing.

Reply to
Nom

Me? i have a few cars. one of them is a Diahatsu Mira 660cc 3 cylinder NA. FWD. 5 speed gearbox. crappy suspension, etc.etc.

:)

Reply to
Brian Su

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