DMX84 said:
I like the spacer idea, but is it hard on wheel bearings? The company I work for installs wheel spacers on the rear of Ford f-350 4WD to make it track the same as the front.
Do our LC’s track the same front to rear?
What is the advantage or disadvantage?
DMX
I doubt spacers/adapters will cause any significant premature bearing wear. With a 1" spacer/adapter, you are going from a +60mm wheel offset to a +35mm offset--not even zero offset. It is when you switch to an extremely negative offset wheel should you worry. Adding spacers do effect the steering but that's another thread.
I have heard of lots of truck guys trying to keep their track width the same in the front and rear because it "makes their truck drive better." I don't know about that statement as there are many stock cars that have a different track widths front and rear for handling purposes alone.
The stock track width are as follows:
Front 63.80"
Rear 63.60"
After you lift your cruiser, measure the front track width and you'll see that it is narrower than when at stock height. You could simply add a spacer. The wheel studs are about 1.25" long. You should get at least 6 full turns when putting on the lug nuts and the wheel studs should always stick out past the wheel's mounting surface otherwise longer wheel studs will be required. I am guessing you can probably use up to 1/4" spacer. For more width, you can go to wheel adapters as picutred in post #10 of this thread.
Wheel adapters can be used with a minimum width of 1" on the cruiser w/o grinding down the wheel studs. Though this is only true with an OEM alloy wheel. Probably even 7/8" would work but I haven't tried it.
A consideration when using 1+ inch wheel adapters and 35's in the IFS is that though you will gain track width at ride height, when at FULL compression, the top of the tire will not "tuck" into the fender like it often does with rigid axle suspension. So your front tire could possibly hit the fender before it hits the bumpstops. A 1" body lift could could provide the necessary clearance or you could lower the bumpstops a bit. I don't think this is a problem with 33's though as there is 1" more clearance between the tire/fender lip. Additionally, using higher rate T-bars reduce the chances of hitting full compression some.
My advice is to compress the IFS the front suspension as much as possible and see what kind of clearance you have. Then decide if you still want to use spacers/adapters.
