Comparison Between Wheel Spacer Selections

How to Select Quality Wheel Spacers to Fit Your Vehicle www.bmpdesign.com Today's topic is going to be Wheel Spacers. It's going to be a two part series that's going to discuss why somebody would want a pro wheel spacers on their vehicle and if you choose to, how you would select a quality wheel spacers set for your car? One of the reasons you want to put wheel spacers on your vehicle, if your going to add big brake kit to your vehicle and you need more clearance for those larger calipers. Another reason that you might want to add spacers, if you're putting on a different set of wheels that have different offsets, so you can correct the offset in comparison to your original wheel. Another reason, a lot of people do it is just simply for more stability by widening the track of your car. Then there's the most favorite and that's to fill out those fender wheels and make your tyres just look larger on the vehicle. We fully understand what makes a quality wheel spacer. We have to understand how the actual wheel fits on the vehicle via the hub and the brake roller. If you look at the wheel hub, there are two step, lips right here. A larger lip is what centers up the brake roller. It uses a locating screw to hold it on to the hub. The larger or smaller diameter but yet taller radius lip is what centers inside of the wheel of the vehicle. That hole in the wheel has to be exactly the same diameter as this radius lip on the bearing. In order to center the vehicle's wheel onto the hub, we're also using lug bolts that will have a taper to them or they'll have a slight ball shape to them. They assist in that centering. But the true centering occurs from this raised center lip right here on the vehicle. That's called hub center. If this piece right here is the correct diameter with the wheel, it's going to be a hub centered wheel. There are some after-market wheels out there that have a larger centerbore that do not center on this. They're totally relying on the lug bolt to center it up. Those wheels will always give you balance problems. So now let's take a look at what makes a good quality wheel spacer. Now that you know the different features of the rotor, the hub and the wheel, you have to look for a wheel spacer that is vehicle specific. Don't purchase any universal wheel spacers. Here's a universal wheel spacer and if you look at this wheel spacer, it's just a cast piece of aluminum. It has a variety of holes in it. Most of the holes are oval shaped or triangular shaped and this spacer right here is designed to fit almost any vehicle that has a 4 or a 5 lug pattern. The centerbore is not specific to any particular size and if you look real closely, there are small casting marks right there, right in between each lug bolt. This is where the air would come out if they're pouring aluminum and that air hole right there, is keeping the piece from laying flat on the actual rotor surface or flat on the inside of the wheel. If you look at our vehicle specific spacers that we have here, that are made by Race MaXx. You're going to see that these are actually machine pieces of aluminum. They have specific centerbores that are made for your particular vehicle. They have a unique bolt pattern which are for your vehicle and they'll also have the correct bolt size. Now, on a small 5 millimeter spacer like this, one that you'll possibly use for just a little extra wheel clearance. Let's say you are trying to get a little bit more caliper clearance or tie rod clearance or something that's given you a little bit of an issue by installing a different vehicle's wheel on the car like another BMW wheel on a earlier BMW or what have you. You'll notice on a 5 millimeter wheel spacer, there's not enough material there to do a hub center raised piece on it. So, in that particular wheel spacer if you install it, you're going to put that on the original centerbore and you're going to notice that there's still protrusion from the original hub coming through. So you're going to still have the centering device that's going to center up in your wheel. Now when you get a little thicker than about 12 millimeters, you're going to be faced with the problem of -- this low flange is going to go away. So for anything in that range, you want to make sure that you have a raised center hub and that raised center hub is basically just going to duplicate the centering device, the centering ring in the middle. It's going to duplicate that right on the wheel spacer. So if you take this particular wheel spacer and put it on that particular hub right there, it'll fit like down snug and you'll notice that there's absolutely no play there. There might be 2000 play. So now you've got essentially the same situation, as if your vehicle had no space around it at all. You've got this raised center hub that'll fit precisely in your wheel and it'll give you an exact fit and the exact centering device. Now what you'll have to do when you install spacers that are thicker, you'll have to replace your stock, lug bolts with extended lug bolts. If you purchase the Race MaXx wheel spacer kit, you'll get longer bolts that go along with the spacers and you'll get an extended length locater bolt for your brake rotor. So when you are finished, what you're going to do here is you'll center up your locater bolt and what you're going to do now is you'll take an Allen wrench and you're going to absolutely lock down the spacer with the rotor to the hub. Now you've got a one piece precision machine, centering ring for your wheel. For more Technical Video and Tech Tips, please visit us online at www.bmpdesign.com