I saw some wheel spacers on the web shopping and I thought about getting some so that maybe I could get some wider tires.
has anyone used them? and do spacers cause problems?

 

I've never used them, but a friend once had some custom made to accomadate a set of 8.5" wide wheels on his '84 SAS. The wheels were for a IFS Toy, and when mounted on the '84, the wheel pressed snugly against the tie rod, and locked down the front. Bottom line was that they did infact space the wheel away from the tie rod, but due to the "custom" made spacers, he was never able to achieve a balenced front ride. I suggested try to secure them to the wheel using a good epoxy, so that the spacer would be on the wheel, and then rebalence, but he just went with a different wheel.

 

I'm researching these for a freind, and this was the best I could find searching.

Can anybody tell me more about them? Safe? Practical? Opinions?

Gracias. :beaver:

 

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showt...hreadid=200758

 

just get the bolt on style spacers, not the slip on ones. i ran a set of bolt on spacers on my taco and never had a problem with them, on or off road.

 

Cool, thanks guys. I was mostly wondering if they could have any ill-effects on parts of the axle, wheel, etc.

 

just the same as a wheel with less backspacing.

 

Which could mean premature bearing failure. Anytime you move the wheel centerline away from the bearing centerline this is a possibility. The whole idea of the original wheel offset is to keep these two centerlines as close together as possible. Deviate significantly from this and the stress loading on the bearings changes enough to possibly cause premature failure.

K. Now that I've spoken the manufacturer gospel, I've had signifcantly altered offset for fifteen years without any problems. Just be sure to use the bolt-on style spacers as previously stated.

 

So does that mean its bad to have a set of aftermarket wheels with different backspacing? Cause I have 15x8 Tech1 Crawlers with 3.5" backspacing...

Fink

 

Sweet. That's kinda what I wanted to hear, cause I'm thinking of getting them myself. I think my truck would look a lot better with the wheels out a little more.

Thank you all, I've been trying to get a straight answer from many people about this, and all anybody would tell me was, 'it's not safe' and leave it at that. I wanted to know why, and I finally found an answer.

Gracias. :beaver: