Spacers - Views and limitations

Hi all

I was really hoping the AP Racing brakes I bought would fit under my CCW 18" wheels today, alas sadly they don't. There is plenty of room around the caliper (length) but unfortunately there isn't enough clearance with the spokes. I would say they foul by around 1-1.5cms.

Now I've heard mixed reports about spacers and I've never been keen myself on running a set. Especially when you're looking at longer studs etc too and I'm not convinced of their safety. This could be my naivitiy and hence I'm asking the opinions of both people that run them and those with views against.

Are there any limitations/max values to the depth of spacers ?

I reckon I would need one about 1.5cm thick to give a few mm clearance on the caliper.

Appreciate your help.

Thanks

Greg

15mm hubcentric spacers will be fine on a stock body car

Personally I would never use them, but if I were going to, I would only use a known, trusted brand like H&R.

CCW should really sort the design of the wheel out, they must know that many of these wheels are going on high performance cars with big brakes.

My h&r hub centric spacers never caused any issues whatsoever, they were 25mm on all 4 corners. Don't use them anymore as I changed wheels, but they were brilliant.

I would not consider using slip on spacers with longer bolts though. H&R you can't go wrong.

I have a pair for sale if you decide to go this route. If 25mm is too big for you I would still recommend going for the same type though. Make sure your wheels have spaces in between the bolt holes on the back for the stock bolts to fit in, like this....

Personally I wouldn't use them, especially at your power level. Have a read of the quote below and make of it what you will

It's not spacers per se that knacker hub bearings, it's moving the tyre centreline outwards relative to the hub bearing centreline. If you took things to a ludicrous degree and had spacers 2 feet thick the centre of the tyres would be about 20 inches outboard of the bearings, and that puts a huge extra load on them through leverage effects. I hate spacers, wouldn't dream of using them on my own car, but if you must be sure to check the bolts studs and nuts as used are not some junk. That's easier said then done of course.

 

They MUST be hub centric and a perfect fit inside the wheel counter bore and on the nose of the wheel hub of the car. There are so many cars running spacers because the makers of cheap Asian wheels do generic ones with a dirty big counter bore in the wheel that need spigot rings, and a small range of offsets that may require spacers. A proper wheel has the right counter bore without spigot rings, is forged, and has the right offset without spacers. Meeting all those criteria means either an OE wheel from a similarish model, or a custom wheel, unless you are very lucky.

 

I am not at all happy about Copperslip grease between the interfaces being a good idea, the spacers are supposed to take all drive and braking torque, not the bolts / studs, via friction clamping. The bolts / studs must be only in tension, not in torsion. reducing the friction coefficient of the hub / spacer / wheel interfaces is negating their ability to transmit these torque changes.

Personally I wouldn't use them, especially at your power level. Have a read of the quote below and make of it what you will

Thanks for that mate. Confirmed my fear and thinking!

15mm hubcentric spacers will be fine on a stock body car

 

/QUOTE]

I was thinking 15mm max would be OK but Chris W's comments are enlightening.

Personally I would never use them, but if I were going to, I would only use a known, trusted brand like H&R.

 

CCW should really sort the design of the wheel out, they must know that many of these wheels are going on high performance cars with big brakes.

Agreed, quite disappointed to be fair for such a reputatable wheel manufacturer. Still don't want to part with them.

My h&r hub centric spacers never caused any issues whatsoever, they were 25mm on all 4 corners. Don't use them anymore as I changed wheels, but they were brilliant.

 

I would not consider using slip on spacers with longer bolts though. H&R you can't go wrong.

 

I have a pair for sale if you decide to go this route. If 25mm is too big for you I would still recommend going for the same type though. Make sure your wheels have spaces in between the bolt holes on the back for the stock bolts to fit in, like this....

 

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161222/6e89292abccd5dcd339cec454e2afde9.jpg

 

 

/QUOTE]

 

Thanks mate, I'll have a think but 25mm are too large. I would go 15mm max if at all.

 

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I can't understand why using spacers is any different from using a wheel with a wider offset? The weight of the wheel/tyre is still shifted outwards whichever way. As long as the spacers don't fail I cannot see the difference?

I will now wait to be proven wrong [emoji23]

I've always worked on the rule that anything bigger than 25mm is bad news, even when using Hub Centric ones.

Presuming you have the standard 'Supra fitment' CCWs? If so, they are 18x10 +44 up front as it stands. Usually they'd come with a 3mm or 5mm slip on spacer to clear UK brakes.

If you are putting on a 15mm spacer, you're effectively making the wheel 18x10 +29. I'm going to assume you are running either a 265/35/18 or 285/30/18? You may find that you'll struggle to fit them under your arch. Depends how low you run the car right enough but it'll sit very close.

I have always used hub-centric spacers up to 25mm, decent ones are made of bilit alloy and are plenty strong, its the shear force on the studs that is the main loading, and this is offset by the quality and length of the bolts used, but in practice its should cause no real problems if the bolt length is kept low.

But other than this, it is no different to using different negative offset wheels, wheel bearing load will obviously increase with large negative offsets, but they will increase the further the load point gets from the bearing.

I've 25mm spacers all round on OEM wheels, the car feels and drives much better. I've ran spacers on various cars over the last few years ranging from 15mm to 50mm and never had any problems at all.

I used spacers on my last wheels, but I couldn't wait to get rid of them. In my eyes they are just another part that could fail, better to get a wheel that fits properly. That said, I never had any issues with them, but I wasn't running 800hp either or big brakes either.

Never used them, never will.

Keep the brakes and sell the CCW's......

to me

I've ran spacwrs for years on all my cars and never had an issue, I never use bolt ons though, always good quality extended studs and slip on hubcentric spacers.

We had 10mm Hubcentric spacers on the front of our previous XXR wheels to clear the UK calipers. Never had an issue with them at all.

Appreciate all the comments and help guys. Thank you. I think I'm gonna pass these up and stick with my UKs

I use 15mm bolt on hubcentric spacers on mine. Billet alloy ones.

Note though that in order to use bolt on 15mm spacers on the front you will have to cut your studs down by about 5mm because otherwise they will protrude past the spacer and not allow the wheel to sit flat against the face of the spacer

Don't the H & R spacers up to 20mm thick just use a longer stud which simply replaces the OE stud ?

Basically its just sandwiched between the hub face and mating face of the wheel and not bolted to hub

Don't the H & R spacers up to 20mm thick just use a longer stud which simply replaces the OE stud ?

 

Basically its just sandwiched between the hub face and mating face of the wheel and not bolted to hub

Yes Dunk there are two types. The slip on ones with longer studs would be my preference to the hub bolted ones but alas I think I'm just gonna sell them.

Not quite sure why you all seem to have a preference for the type that uses a longer stud? you do realize that the longer the stud the higher the shear force is, obviously the bolt torque has a limiting factor, but i would much rather use a billet spacer with it own captive bolts, as that way the shear force is distributed between 10 much shorter bolts instead of just five long ones, and that's looking at it from an engineering point of view.

Are these the ones that came of Chris's Supra ? I thought he was running those brakes with CCW's on

Are these the ones that came of Chris's Supra ? I thought he was running those brakes with CCW's on

Different brakes mate. Those were Brembo SRT8 calipers that Chris had.

Are these the ones that came of Chris's Supra ? I thought he was running those brakes with CCW's on

No mate those are Brembos from the Jeep SRT. Mine are AP Racing that are supra fitment mate.

Presuming you have the standard 'Supra fitment' CCWs? If so, they are 18x10 +44 up front as it stands. Usually they'd come with a 3mm or 5mm slip on spacer to clear UK brakes.

 

If you are putting on a 15mm spacer, you're effectively making the wheel 18x10 +29. I'm going to assume you are running either a 265/35/18 or 285/30/18? You may find that you'll struggle to fit them under your arch. Depends how low you run the car right enough but it'll sit very close.

Actually James not entirely sure mate. I don't know what the offset of the wheels is.

All I do know is they are 18x10 7.25 and 18x11 8.25 with 265/35/18 and 295/35/18 tyres respectively and they clear UK specs by a couple of MM.