WHEEL spacers! one question B4 they go on...

[chris CORRADO 0]

ok since the 17" are sitting a bit far in for my liking i want to put some spacers on it...

 

but b4 i go ahead i want to know what is the limit you can space with oridinal wheel bolts. coz i'm lead to believe i need to get another set of longer theard bolts to cope with the extra space???

 

telll me what you think?

[Henny 0]

General rule of thumb is that you should have 1.5 to 2 times the amount of thread into whatever as the width of the bolt...

 

Eg. 10mm wide bolt needs 15mm to 20mm of thread into the threaded hole to be safe... 8)

 

If you're working out wheel bolt lenghts, put the bolt thru the wheel and measure the length of the thread showing, put the spacer on and measure the ammount of thread showing... That'll show you how much thread your life depends on with the spacers on... :shocked: If that scares you, or looks REALLY small, get some new bolts! :-P :lol:

[Corvr6 0]

I tried some 6 mm spacers on the rears and was only left with 6 complete turns compared to the 10 or so without.That was borderline whether to go for the longer bolts for me.

I took the spacers off after only a few days as they were universal spacers and unless you got them centered exactly gave me vibrations +80mph. :roll:

If you want bigger and better then go for the spacers with the hub all in one,can't remember the name of them,someone here will know.A bit pricey though. :wink:

[pookyvr6 0]

With my 17's, got a puncture one day and had to suffer the indignity of going to a Kwak Sh*t to get the puncture repaired. I had 6mm spacers on and still had the original bolts in the car for the Speedlines. Any way, the hairy monkey with the tools got the bolts mixed up and ended up putting the shorter original bolts on.

 

About 20 mins later on the M9 to Stirling a massive vibration started to come from the wheel. 2 of the 4 bolts had gone and the last two were just hanging in there.

 

Probably my own fault for taking the bolts away from the wheel to check em over but my advice would be if in doubt go for a bolt 10-15mm longer than the ones you have.

 

Phew!

[Ess Three 0]

On the 5 stud set up, you can get away with 5mm spacers on standard bolts...but personally, I'd be inclined to get longer bolts for those too.

 

The problem seems to be that many of the longer bolts are only available in 1 longer length...and although fitting bolts that are very long won't cause problems with the rear mounts, if the bolts are too long and your car has ABS, you can screw the bolts too far through and they end up hitting the ABS sensor rings behind the hub...tighten even further and you bend the sensor rings. This can cause problems with the ring hitting the ABS pick-ups, damage the pick-ups and also cause a lot of noise!

 

The answer appears to be to have the bolts turned down in a lathe to the length of the original bolts + the width of the spacer.

That way you have a perect fit...

Not ideal if you don't have access to a lathe / local machine shop though!

 

 

To give you some idea of how long a lot of the 'longer' bolts are...they are fine for both 16mm and 20mm spacers...so using them on 5mm spacers gives you an extra 11-15mm extra to find room for behind the front hub.

 

With regard to spacers in 5mm, 6mm and 8mm widths, as has already been mentioned, they can cause vibrations as they are not true hub-centric spacers in that they don't provide the correct height of raised hub centre to ensure the wheels stay correctly centred whilst they are tightened up.

10mm spacers are hub-centric, and that's the minimum I'd fit...because at least you know they aren't going to cause you any grief.

[cheesy 0]

i'm running 15mm spacers, so these are 15mm longer than origanals

[brian g60 corrado 0]

were can you buy these hub -centric spacers and how much.as i have this problem of not being able to get the spacers centralised.

[cheesy 0]

i got mine from trackstore

 

http://www.trackstore.co.uk/shop%20frame.html