[alanw8]

hey guys I'm thinking of putting on 1.5" wheel spacers. Has anybody had any problems or any insight on them? Thanks

 

[kaitlyn]

Have you put the 1.5 spacers in yet? If so, how does it look? I've been told its too much and too only do 1 inch. I'm also debating on which spacer to do for mine.

 

[Matt Dyer]

What backspacing do you have on your rims that will be paired with the spacers?

Our vehicles work BEST with a 5.5" backspacing (which is what our stock wheels have). The most you want to go as far as backspacing is 4.75" backspacing in my opinion. That is what most members on here choose to get in their Cragar Soft 8's.

So that being said, I think a 1.5" spacer is going to give you some rubbing. I'm running a 4.5" backspacing wheel at the moment and have had to remove the plastic flares and trim a little bit of a metal in order to get the wheels to properly stuff. This is with running 265/75/16's.

Just some food for thought.

 

[alanw8]

hey I have put on my spacers, it looks great. The only issue I had was after I had it aligned the was rubbing in my wheel well but I had to modify the body inside the well to get clearance. what were you planning to do to yours? maybe I can help

 

[alanw8]

I did run into some rubbing but I modified it to clear, thanks for the advice

 

[Matt Dyer]

What specifically did you trim? My plasma cutter is still waiting on home patiently.

 

[ThompsonXTerra]

Be careful

A lot of people never have problems with spacers, but some people do. There's always the chance that you'll be one of them.
If you get spacers you usually have to get longer bolts which increases the risk of those bolts breaking ESPECIALLY if you plan to go offroad with your X.
Tire rubbing is also a common issue, along with incorrect installation which can cause numerous problems, and there's a few others but I'm blanking.
Because of those reasons I have decided to not get spacers and save my money to get wider tries and rims in the future. Much safer and more reliable option.

 

[xterracc]

I put 1.5 spacers and a heat gun to push the plastic fender liners back for clearance

 

[TJTJ]

A lot of people never have problems with spacers, but some people do. There's always the chance that you'll be one of them.
If you get spacers you usually have to get longer bolts which increases the risk of those bolts breaking ESPECIALLY if you plan to go offroad with your X.
Tire rubbing is also a common issue, along with incorrect installation which can cause numerous problems, and there's a few others but I'm blanking.
Because of those reasons I have decided to not get spacers and save my money to get wider tries and rims in the future. Much safer and more reliable option.

You don't need longer bolts for the real spacers, just the ones you should never use anyway.

The real ones use one set of bolts to bolt the spacer to the hub, and, you then bolt the rim to the spacer instead, as if it were the hub.



For the X, REAR spacers work fine because its a live axle that doesn't steer.

FRONT spacers make it so you can't fit as large a tire, for the same work...because you have IFS and it steers....and too little BS means the tire swings in a wider arc, and hits more stuff in the way unless you trim more...

and with less trimming, and more BS, you COULD HAVE fit a larger tire.


So, we get 5.5" from the factory, which actually works best as far as large tire fitment.

A 1.5" spacer reduces the BS to only 4".


I could mount 33 x 13.5/16 LTB mud tires on the stock rims, and trim only plastic to do it. (With 2" BL).

If I only had 4" BS, I'd be trimming metal to mount 31's.

A 31x10.5 tire is narrower than a 33 x 13.5" tire by ~ 3"

That means my 13.5" tire sticks out ~ 1.5" more than a 10.5" tire would.

So, I can have a real fat off road tire that WORKS, or, a skinny wussy tire that would fit a stock X, but is on training wheels to stick out the same amount as my real tires.


I'd rather go for GO than SHOW.




>


My personal solution was to use the stock rims in front, with no spacers, and, add rear 1.5" spacers ONLY.

It worked like a charm....and, as I used real spacers, and lock-tite, and a torque wrench, they stayed on w/o a peep for about 350,000 miles. They are still on, but, I have that axle in my back yard awaiting another project and its not on the road at the moment.

I've also run them on my jeeps w/o a problem, for decades....etc.






As a clarification - If you can run the same BS on all 4 corners, cheap rims with less BS do exactly the same thing as spacers, for less.

On the X though, the front should not have spacers due to the reduced clearance, so, to avoid needing a front spare and a rear spare, its easier to carry one spare, and have spacers on the rear hubs.

 

[MeToo]

Edit: please delete.

 

[Glen Godfrey]

You can measure the distance between wheels and fenders to determine what thickness of wheel spacers to install. The best advice is to make sure you get quality, hub-centric spacers, such as those by BONOSS. The non-hub-centric, inexpensive adapters/spacers are known to cause vibrations. Make sure what you are looking at is hub-centric.

I had BONOSS wheel spacers 20mm on my car for almost 21,000 miles, with no issues whatsoever. They can customize the thickness and data that I want, so that I can install new tires with different data, and the customization time is very fast, just 1~3 days. They have aluminum alloy 7075-T6 and 6061-T6 options. 7075-T6 will be more expensive but better in quality. In fact, 6065-T6 is good enough. Its tensile strength, yield strength and elongation can support our normal use. And its lugs are grade T10, studs are forged grade 12.9.

Here is an article introducing spacers.
Hope this helps.

 

[Blackberry]

Google “broken wheel spacers” and you’ll quickly find out why I will never use them. I consider all wheel spacers unsafe for offroad use. Most spacers are designed for “look” or “stance”. Function before fashion on the trail. The metal they’re made of has little impact. I’m sorry to everyone that loves spacers