Spacer pro/con

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T

thebizbucket

15 Year 10 Year
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Jun 20, 2006
Threads
17
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After seeing an 80 in another thread with spaced wheels I started wondering what the pros/cons are of this. Specially 1.5" spacers.

Pros
- if you are going to paint the wheels black it'll make the inside sit flush and look sick (yeah, that's how i am spending my weekend too!)
- less tippy on highway ?

Cons
- Little bit of "curb bumping" factor to get used to ?

I really don't know. Would love to be enlightened. Thanks!
 
I'm not clear on what you mean by "sit flush". The con I know off the the failure point you create, but how much of an actual failure point it is, I can't comment. Spacers can also help/hurt with flexing, it may put it in a larger part of the wheelwell, or it may push it out where you are limited by the fender flares.
 
Ran spacers on my 60 for over a year, no problems.
 
.If you remove the hub cap there is a large ugly knobby looking thing about 2" in diameter poking out. I only noticed this because I apparently LOST my cap on the weekend :doh:

This is a "not flush"
attachment.php


and this is "flush"

attachment.php


Unless the lower pic is just playing tricks on my eyes.
 
Though I'm too sure about the 1½" spacers, I'm damn sure about ¼" spacers. Was a very bad idea for me and apparently, my tires travel faster without being attached to the truck!
Broken_Cruiser.jpg


Damn gravity:doh:
 
Ok

Pros:

Wider is better.
You went higher ei lift in order to gain ground clearance more travel etc. But by doing this you changed the center of gravity of the truck this added cons to lifting the truck but if you go wider too the change can balance out maybe it could even perform better. For some a wider tire is all you need but some want more so they are using a wheel spacer.
Do you need them on an 80 with only a 2.5" lift? NO. Will it help on and off-road? Yes

The cons are this more stress on the wheel studs and the wheel bearing steering componets and the birf joints. When you move the tire out instead of it being centered over the inside and larger part of the bearing the weight is now over the smaller part.

I ran 1.5" for some time and we liked them however, when we went to the Toyo MTs we started to get a lot of fender rubing and hard tire cutting hits so off they came.
 
Wow. That is scary looking. What sheared off / broke / happened ?


justchillinout said:
Though I'm too sure about the 1½" spacers, I'm damn sure about ¼" spacers. Was a very bad idea for me and apparently, my tires travel faster without being attached to the truck!
Broken_Cruiser.jpg


Damn gravity:doh:
Click to expand...
 
My truck upsets me on the windy highways in BC. It rolls a lot. I bought the soft springs and was going to move to the harder ones as I upgraded my bumpers.. a little more stability would go a long long way for my personal comfort - and I think if i switched the springs now when I upgraded bumpers I'd be back in unhappy land.

I am going to run it by my local mechanic that does lots of offroad trucks and see what their opinion is..

Anyone have negative exp with 1.5"s ?


NorCalSam said:
Ok

Pros:

Wider is better.
You went higher ei lift in order to gain ground clearance more travel etc. But by doing this you changed the center of gravity of the truck this added cons to lifting the truck but if you go wider too the change can balance out maybe it could even perform better. For some a wider tire is all you need but some want more so they are using a wheel spacer.
Do you need them on an 80 with only a 2.5" lift? NO. Will it help on and off-road? Yes

The cons are this more stress on the wheel studs and the wheel bearing steering componets and the birf joints. When you move the tire out instead of it being centered over the inside and larger part of the bearing the weight is now over the smaller part.

I ran 1.5" for some time and we liked them however, when we went to the Toyo MTs we started to get a lot of fender rubing and hard tire cutting hits so off they came.
Click to expand...
 
biz

Well, scary? Yes. Especially at 100 km/hr.

What happened?

I have a set of tires & rims that fit very nice, however, they suck on the road (bouncy, track easy, hard to keep in straight line basically, but great off road!)

So I picked up a set of used Tacoma rims with brand new tires. They are 15" and same bolt pattern. This seemed great, but they didn't quite clear the front brake rotors. So I picked up some 1/4" spacers to try and give me the needed clearance.

Got the clearance, but not enough thread left to hold the tire one.

Barely 5 blocks from home on the maiden voyage and no time to react, I lose a tire.

What seems to have happened. Due to the lack of thread, I over tightened the lugs and one of the bolts snapped while driving. The remaining bolts unthreaded themselves while driving.

I think I overtightened because when I put the old tires back on, I snapped a bolt on one of the back tires.

So now I'm trying to find a new rotor. Which isn't that easy. Toyota dealer wants $120 for a new one and I can't find any aftermarket.

Lesson learned. Now I know how to pull the axle apart!
 
The wider track will increase your turning radius - not sure if it would be enough to notice.
 
That's the difference btw wheel spacers and wheel adaptors. Spacers are a bad Idea and wheel adaptors are fine in my eyes. With stock wheels and 315 tires and 2" bump stop spacers, 1" wheel adaptors are perfect to allow no rubbing on articulation. I have 1.25" and i have a little rubbing on my finder flares but my dad has 1" and has none.
 
With the 1.5" spacers, are you tossing mud/crud all over your truck and through the open windows?
 
clarkrw3 said:
That's the difference btw wheel spacers and wheel adaptors. Spacers are a bad Idea and wheel adaptors are fine in my eyes. With stock wheels and 315 tires and 2" bump stop spacers, 1" wheel adaptors are perfect to allow no rubbing on articulation. I have 1.25" and i have a little rubbing on my finder flares but my dad has 1" and has none.
Click to expand...

I guess I'm not understanding the difference between wheel "spacers" and "adaptors"? Could someone explain? I was considering the Marlin Crawler ones as I would like to widen my stance for stability.

Wheel spacers?
http://www.marlincrawler.com/images/5lugspacers_500.jpg

Wheel Adapters?
http://www.adaptitusa.com/
 
As I think we're talking about it here, spacers slide onto the OEM lugs, moving the wheel out whatever their thickness is. This is a concern because it gives the lugnuts less thread to attach to. Adapaters slide onto the lug studs and bolt on. They have their own lug studs, spaced between the OEM studs, that the wheel attaches to.
 
FZJFillmore said:
As I think we're talking about it here, spacers slide onto the OEM lugs, moving the wheel out whatever their thickness is. This is a concern because it gives the lugnuts less thread to attach to. Adapaters slide onto the lug studs and bolt on. They have their own lug studs, spaced between the OEM studs, that the wheel attaches to.
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes sense, the terms are probably interchanged all the time thus making it a little confusing.

It certainly seems that something with it's own studs make much more sense.
 
The Marlin units are called hubcentric spacers. They are safe to use as they bolt to the hub and then the rim bolts to the spacer with the studs that stick out.

Cheap spacers simply move the rim outwards and lose thread bite as they don't have the studs incorporated into their design.

My friend had a 31" rim/tire fly off of his FJ60 on the freeway at 6am because he ran the wrong offset rims and the only way to make them clear the brake calipers up front was with 1/4" spacers. He ran it like this for a long time; however the night before he redid the brakes and maybe the threads failed from being overly tightened due to lack of threads. He learned his lesson as he could've killed himself and the tire flew off into oncoming traffic and totalled the vehicle it hit luckily not injuring the other driver either.

After that story I stay away from spacers that aren't hubcentric.
 
Sounds to me like all of the horror stories are nonhubcentric spacers which makes perfect sense. Has anyone had/heard of a hubcentric spacer horror story? I am currently considering a set of spacers to help add stability with my OME heavies. I am leary about the wheel bearings being under that much load. Does anyone have long term experience with wheel spacers and bearing wear? I imagine they can't be less than a given thickness by design and still work, is 1" the smallest? Also I don't have flares anymore and my wheels have 1/4" more postitive backspacing so I am wondering how far they will stick out of the fenders. Anybody have pictures of a flareless 80 with OEM wheels or wheels with the equivelent back spacing? I don't want everything I drive through or on to be thrown all over the side of my rig and I certainly don't want to be hassled by the man as they are kind of finicky in my neck of the woods.
 
Montana Cruiser said:
I guess I'm not understanding the difference between wheel "spacers" and "adaptors"? Could someone explain? I was considering the Marlin Crawler ones as I would like to widen my stance for stability.

Wheel spacers?
http://www.marlincrawler.com/images/5lugspacers_500.jpg

Wheel Adapters?
http://www.adaptitusa.com/
Click to expand...

Marlin used to sell spacers without studs and nuts. They are including studs and nuts now because of accident like justchillinout from their earlier spacers. Search pirate and you will see.
 
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