4-lug wheel spacers?
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Roland69
Sergeant Tangnet
there was a thread on here about a guy with spacers and his wheel fell(broke) off on the highway because of the spacers....I would never run them after seeing that....but maby they were cheap ones
It did happen. It's happened to quite a few guys.
In all fairness, they were the cheapo spacers that use your stock lugs but just act as a spacer.
The proper way to do it is to use a hubcentric spacer from Max motorsports which bolts to your axle and then has another set of lugs that the wheel bolts to. You should also upgrade your stock lugs to hardened lugs when you do this.
But those cheap $30 spacers are just asking for trouble.
craigwhite89gt
New Member
I did a quick search but couldn't find it.
If you have time to search the guys screenname was UnderPressureGT. But yes it did happen, he had pics of it and all.
Again, do you have the thread documenting this?
I drove 100-300 miles with a tow dolly with three missing lug nuts and two almost off with my 01 Bullitt on the dolly and the wheel did not fall off (the wheel, bearing was destroyed however) and I witnessed a guy attempt to break his wheel off his Eagle sedan after rounding off a lug nut, after removing the other 4. He drove around several corners at 15-25 MPH with ONE lug nut holding the wheel on trying to break it off and was unsuccessful!!
Seems to be that the idea of 1/4" wheel spacers causing broken wheels etc is urban legend. Even if things break, its tough to know if its the spacer.
yup thats him the car was making 500+ rwhp and had a girl with him showin it out and the damn wheel falls off at around 80mph. at least he got to show her how to handle a car, not built one LOL j/k
i couldnt find the thread either and im not going thro the archives lol thats where u would find it but have fun
No, that thread is so old and threads in talk are not searchable. Unless someone goes back and looks through threads from a year ago, they won't find it.
Why i remember it so well was because the poster made a thread about adding spacers. A few guys chimed in NOT to run those cheapo spacers. He did it anyway and then a week later made a post about his rear wheel passing him on the freeway. A few members will vouch for the threads existence because the original poster was popular on the boards at the time and every post he made was well scrutinized (and criticized)
Unrelated...because this is pure stupidity..but on another Mustang board, there was a V6er who had some 4-lug wheels off his old honda he wanted to put on his Mustang. Well his friend was a machinist and against our advice he decided to have his buddy fab up some 5 to 4 adapters. A week later he posted a thread about totalling the car when his wheel snapped off with the adapters
Anyway, i don't think spacers are a bad thing. The H&R hubcentric spacers that Max Motorsports sells are good quality. I'm thinking of picking up a 1" set for my GT, however as an added safety measure i will also upgrade to hardened lugs in the rear.
It's just those cheapo thin slice 1/8"-1/2" Pep Boys spacers that i think are a little shady. If you want to run those, upgrading to hardened studs should be MANDATORY
txstang84
15 Year Member
Whether it's urban legend or not, it's not a smart thing to do...it puts the wheel studs beyond their yield strength due to less thread engagement, and that's why they break-that's the important part. The studs are made from specific alloys with minimum intended thread engagement, if you drop below that, you're running the risk of breakage.
It's a simple process of elimination. If the stud didn't break for X number of cycles, then suddenly you've altered stresses by installing a spacer, then the wheel falls off, there are only a couple of possibilities here. 1) Lugs weren't tightened properly, or (2) They broke due to stresses beyond normal capacity
It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that at least once in our lives we've all done something we shouldn't have based on a variety of reasons and then had it come back to bite us in the azz...especially when dealing with vehicles...I've hung my exhaust with a bent up coat hanger before, because I was broke, and couldn't even afford a trip to the muffler shop-was it smart?? No; did it work, at least temporarily? well, sort of...except when I hit speedbumps.
Just my thoughts though...
Not to mention the spacers act as, well a spacer and move the force of the wheel away from the hub of the axle or rotor. As with all levers, the further away from the fulcrum point (the point where the lug meets the hub/axle/rotor) the more force is put on it.
So a 1/2" spacer would put more stress on the lugs than a 1/4" spacer.
This is why hubcentric spacers are important as the positively locate the spacer so it doesn't move around behind the wheel under load
txstang84
15 Year Member
txstang84
15 Year Member
Here's some basis for an informed decision: installing wheel spacers alters/increases forces and stresses incurred by your wheel studs which MAY (more than likely will) cause premature failure. If you want to run them, go for it. People here are only telling you that it's not the greatest idea. Mustang5L5 is offering an alternative with the hubcentric spacers.
Who knows, you may never deal with the same problems as dealt with by others, and if that's the case, we'll all be happy that you didn't end up losing control of your vehicle due to sheared studs.
Just because no one here can find the specific thread where an individual lost his wheel (I read it too...but it's been a while back), doesn't mean that it didn't happen...
That would be sweet, driving down the highway at 70mph,and all you see is a rim pass you by. know it's your rim before the ass of the car drops and you start running the brake drum into the pavement.
txstang84
15 Year Member
