I think I might have made a mistake on the wheels I bought. I have a 1981 Pickup Sr5 4wd and bought crag ar soft 8's in 15x8 with a 4" backspace (oops). The wheels are not hub centric and I bought them under the impression they did not need to be. When I had the ties balanced the shop told me they were having trouble getting the weights on inside of the front wheels because they rubbed against the tie rods.

Here are my questions. 1) Do the wheels need to be hub centric? 2) I'd like to get some spacers to fix the rubbing issue. Does anyone have any recommendations on type? I was looking at spidertrax but none of them were applicable for a 1981 4wd Pickup or will any 6x5.5 spacer work?


Thanks.

 

Pretty sure they don't need to be hub centric. I had Cragar soft 8's, 15x7 w/4" back spacing on my old '83, just used 1.5" wheels spacers from Trail-Gear. I used them on all corners cause otherwise the 33's I had would rub the frame/fender well in the rear, too, and they were just 10.5" wide 33's. Pretty sure either 3/16" thick is the thickest you can go without needing spacers that have their own lug studs. Otherwise you have to go up to 1" spacers to be thick enough to clear the lug studs.

 

Yep, 3.75" is as high as you can go in backspacing without rubbing any steering equipment and that is cutting it close. 79-83 Pickup are considered hub centric, but I haven't heard of anybody having problems using lug centric wheels. If you go with wheel spacers, you might want to check you stud length to determine the appropriate spacer width. If your studs stick out a little more than 1" from the surface of the hub or drum then you'll need to get at least 1.25" spacers to make sure that your studs aren't sticking out beyond the spacers - that would be a problem... Any 6x5.5 spacer will work as long as the center bore is at least 108mm. I assume that you checked to make sure that the center bore in your wheels is at least 108mm? Check out Trail Gear or Marlin Crawler - I'm sure they have something you can use.

 

Hmm, never knew they were hub centric. Thanks for sharing that tidbit

 

Yeah, the way that they have a hub centric hub pilot ring would classify them as hub centric to a 108mm bore, but the lugs do in fact center the wheel as well. The only thing that one should be aware of is if they buy wheels that use a shank lug. In that case they will want to make sure that the wheels have a 108mm bore to prevent any wheel hop that may result from the wheel not being perfectly aligned on the shank lugs.

Furthermore, I have a rear disk brake conversion that causes me to lose the hub pilot ring on my rear end so I have to run a lug centric wheel - although my wheels are considered both hub and lug centric.

 

Why do the weights need to be on the inside of the rim? They can be put on the outside and crimped to the lip.

 

Ideally, you want them on the inside and outside to perfectly balance the wheel but for a lower performance vehicle like a truck it really doesn't matter. Personally, I don't like the clamp on kind and I would never put weights on the outside because it just looks ugly. I always get my wheels balanced with the stick on weights along the centerline of the wheel, but you have to be careful with that if you don't have much caliper clearance. When I took my last set of new wheels to get tires mounted, I used a marker to mark the location of the calipers and told the shop to not put any weights between these two lines.

 

Hey guys im about to buy some rims for my 1980 4x4 and was wondering if I need to go with 6 lug 4.5 or 5.5 from what's stated above I'm thinking the 5.5 is what I will need but just want to confirm

 

1-Don't hijack someone else's thread
2-Use the search feature, this question has be asked over and over again
3-Measuring works too

 

1 I wasn't hijacking but. Was asking a question along the lines of what was asked
2 I've searched on here and google and bing and didn't find anything maybe my African internet it has a lot of restrictions
3 I'm in Africa prepping my truck back In the states to be drivable when I come home for college
4 May God bless you sir for the patience you've given me