Vandit

I've never messed with spacers, so forgive me if this question is obvious.

I purchased a set of bolt-on spacers from Vertex Auto this week and just went outside to start test fitting them on my car. When I tried placing them on the face of the hubs, this is what I encountered.



Do you see how they don't fully insert and sit flush on the hub?

The fitment you see in this pic is just placing them by hand. I can force them a bit and get them almost flush, but there's still the slightest of gap. It's definitely a slight pressed fit. This is all by hand.

I have not tried to tightened the included lugs because I am not sure if this tight of a hub-centric fit is normal, and i'm only test fitting, so the last thing I want is to force them on w/ the lugs only to find out I need to remove them and then I won't be able to because they're stuck on the hub from where they were forced in place.

I cleaned the lip on the hub w/ some WD-40 and put a bit on the inside of the hub-centric part of the spacer. It's still very much a pressed fit.

Is such a tight hub-centric fit normal for spacers?

Vandit

I busted out my ultra high tech caliper and took these measurements.

Outer diameter of hub lip.



Inner diameter of bore on spacer

ChaseN

My bmw's spacers are a similar fit. I slathered the bore of the spacers with copper antisieze and have had them on and off now twice with no issues. I found when I needed them off that a flathead screwdriver tappped gently between rotor and spacer at different spots along the circumference loosened them up quite nicely without any chance of damage.

Personally I think a tight fit is good. Less chance for vibration as everything is definitely going to stay hubcentric even as more parts are involved. Am I reading your caliper correctly that there is slightly less than 1/8" difference?

Vandit

It's under 1mm difference.

ChaseN

I think you're good to go. Put some copper antiseize on there and go to town.

One thing I would do is put a spacer up against the inside of one of your wheels. Make sure THAT interface is not as tight.

Vandit

Everything worked out great, tightened down the nuts and the spacer sat nicely against the hub.

It was going great till I mated the wheel to the newly spacered hub and realized the clearance around the hub area on the OEM 7" +55 Cup II wheels is not sufficient to clear the fasteners on the spacer. therefore, the wheel can't seat. Bummer!

Your screwdriver + mallet approach easily freed up the spacer for removal from the hub.

This really messed up my plan to push the front axle by 15mm per side and the rear by 21mm per side. Luckily I hadn't purchased the rear spacers yet, so it looks like I'll just put these 15mm spacers on the rear (hopefully they'll fit there) and call it a day until I make the time/effort to install extended front studs and use a normal spacer.

ChaseN

Bummer to hear. I'm glad that they at least went on and off easily enough.

911PERVY

Go for 7mm shims on the front and 15mm spacers on the rear. 15mm on the front is too much anyhow really, could well throw the steering feel off

sml

how do you know his wheel sizes?

Vandit

Here are the spacers mounted to the hub.


And here's the fitment problem with the wheel.


That's with the OEM 17x7 +55 Cup II front wheels.

The rear 17x9 is deeper in this area, so hopefully they fit on the rear w/o issues.

ThomasSF

Let us know how it goes for the rear.

Vandit

Alright, so my issues continue.

I went out to the garage tonight to try to put these on the rear. The fitment around the rear hub is the same as the front, but now i'm familiar, so I again put a bit of anti-seize and installed the spacer on the rear hub. I use the included open-ended nuts (look at pic above) to install the spacer to the hub.

I then serve up the rear wheel, and start to install the OEM lugnuts by hand when I notice the wheel isn't closing up to the spacer/hub assembly. The studs on the spacer are too long, so the lug nut bottoms against the stud before it comes close to tightening the wheel!

I remove the wheel and think about it, so I swap the open-ended lugs w/ the OEM nuts and proceed. The clearance from the back of the wheel to the top of the OEM lugs is really close (not like the front, but close). Too close for me to feel comfortable.

So i'm guessing I need to get another set of open-ended lugnuts to install these? The spacers (2) only came w/ 10 of these open-ended lugnuts.

Also, I noticed that the spacers don't exactly sit totally flush with the hub of wheel. When I put the wheel up to the OEM hub (w/ no spacer), and no lugnuts install, I cannot rock the wheel at all, it sits perfectly flush. When the spacer is on there, it rocks ever so slightly. Is that normal? I assume once everything is torqued down, that would go away, but it still doesn't seem too ideal.

Overall, installing and running these spacer is not giving me the warm and fuzzies, at all!

HalV

This is one of the reasons that I bit the bullet and put on spacers (not adapters) and longer studs. That said, since I'm using different wheels for track and street, I hated the look of the long studs sticking out when I was on my street wheels (sans spacers) so I bought a different set of front track wheels that don't require spacers. Now I have to go through the hassle of putting the OEM studs back on.

BTW, If you're tracking your car you should probably invest in some open end steel lug nuts. If you're using OEM wheels, make sure they're ball seat fitment.