I have been keeping my open for some 30-40mm spacers for a while now and have yet to find any for an ‘affordable price’. I am running 14" 5.5J wheels on 185/60’s and have coilovers on the way.
As much as it will be great to lower the rear end a tad more than what the current lowering springs provide, I am still expecting the wheels to look as though they are too shallow in the arch, and need bringing out.
I stumbled on some Universal Spacers, but am sceptical about their quality and safety based on the price over Eibach Spacers for example.
Take a look at them here and let me know what you think.
Nice wide deep dish wheels would resolve this issue!
People would just about “Get away with” those cheap cast spacers with stud extending nuts on Mini’s with 40 to 50 Bhp and a curb weight of around 600Kg. But personally, I wouldn’t trust that style of spacer enough to take any car fitted with them off the axle stands, Let alone out on the road !!!
A lot of people think that the spigot in the middle of a hub is there to keep the wheel from moving on the hub when your going along, It’s not. It’s there to make sure that the wheels true when it’s fitted. When your driving along it’s the friction between the face of the hub against the mounting face of the wheel that stops it moving. The contact surface of them spacers where you’d bolt on the wheel is tiny compares to the hub face that the wheel would originally be against.
The cheapest option I’d ever consider would be extended studs and non hubcentric “Disc” type spacers. If you go along this route, Be aware that you might have a bit of trouble centring the wheel and could end up with quite an impressive vibration at speed.
I use decent quality aluminium bolt on, hubcentric spacers as I have quite a strong dislike of hospital food and trust them to be at least as strong as a cheap set of alloy wheels (Remember, A cheap spacer isn’t going to fail at 30 while going in a straight line, It’s going to be on a corner at speed).
Also, Before you order any particular width of spacers you might find it useful to see something I did on here a few months back when I was playing with a stack of spacers to simulate different offsets.
Scotty B.
PS, Please don’t think I’m having a go at anyone here, I’m not. It’s just that I made every mistake imaginable when I started modifying cars and I really wouldn’t want anyone else to do any of the questionable things that I thought was “Safe enough” before I knew better (Stuff like melting the mainbeam wiring on a Fiat 127 because I was running 4x 100w spotlights off it and just uprated the fuse when it kept blowing, Or mounting a bucket seat using 4 bent bits of 2mm thick aluminium strip). As you can see I’ve done “Stupid”, Now I hope I can use that experience to help prevent others from doing it too.
My MX5 came with a set of 4 universal spacers just like those ones.
They space the wheels out, and the wheels don’t always fall off. However, they can be tricky to use, many people have had problems with them and mine have yielded under the bolt preload.
I have that set sitting on a shelf at home, and I wouldn’t let anyone use them. I really can’t recommend them as a wheel spacer for use on a car that isn’t a static exhibit.
Hub-centric bolt on spacers are the best way of widening your track (and have been used as OEM parts by Porsche as their “wide track” option) unless you have the cash to just buy the right sized set of wheels.
Cheap low-offset wheels can be found by looking for wheels from a BMW E30. My ET24 15x7" wide wheels cost £100 and came with a free and fully working 325i.
I’m guessing the Centre Bore has to match too right, to reduce vibration etc. Wondering if it was possible to work around that as the below have come to my interest:
The BMW uses bolts not nuts, so if you buy BMW spacers you’ll need to find some low profile nuts to suit your studs (I’ve bought from a few places but the DriftWorks shop is the best I’ve found), and then you’ll need a set of wheel bolts in the BMW thread that have the right cone angle for your wheels (BMW used different cone angles for some of their wheels and if you get the cone angle wrong you’ll be lucky to get 5 miles without a wheel falling off - I’ve seen it done).
The importance of the spigot size is debatable. Most of the 40 or so wheels I’ve had on my MX5 haven’t had the right spigot diameter, and I’ve had no issues with vibration. However, if you fit the BMW spacers you will be restricted to only being able to fit wheels with huge spigot diameters.
My MX5 specific bolt on spacers were £100 for 25mm and £105 for 30mm. I’m a big fan of pikey cheap bodges (just look at my home made body panels) but I’d be seriously tempted to just buy the right spacers.
That said - I have fitted Nissan spec spacers to my RX7. But they were free, and I’ve done a lot of this sort of thing before.
