Warning - wheel spacers...

[Rashman]

Hey guys,

Just something I wanted to share with you all..

Below, is a link to a thread on the GT-R forum about a guy whos car suffered a catastrophic failure of a wheel spacer he was using on his front hubs.

I'm sure we are all pretty well educated when it comes to wheel spacers, but I wanted to share this anyway just to save someone from suffering the same fate.


Although wheel spacers are able to be used on the front and rear hubs, people that use them tend to use them on the rears in order to push the rear rims out slightly in order to achieve a slightly more aggressive stance.

Now I know lots of people have differing views regarding the use of spacers and this thread is in no way an invite to a large scale debate as to whether people should use them or not, or an opportunity to jump on those that do use them.

In short, wheel spacers are perfectly safe to use, so long as they are decent, hubcentric, TUV approved and not too thick.

Decent spacers are generally made from billit aluminium.

There are typically 2 types of spacers you can use..

Hubcentric spacers that sit onto your hub freely and then the wheel sits snuggly onto the spacer and then you bolt the wheel into place, with the wheel bolts passing through your lug holes, through the holes in the spacers and into the hub. Longer bolts are needed with this type of spacer.

Again, perfectly safe, so long as you're not going too thick with your choice of spacer.

The 2nd type of spacers, are the spacers that bolt to your hub, and then you bolt your wheel to the spacer. Again, perfectly safe and designed to do this.

However, if you are going to track your car, like this guys was in his
new GT-R, you may want to consider removing spacers from the front hubs!

He was using the 2nd type of spacer which failed.
Track use put far too much stress through the spacer, which it just couldn't cope with.

There are a few speculated reasons for this failure posted on the GT-R thread, but I believe the failure accured because there was not enough meat in the spacer bolted to the hub.

The 2nd type of spacer needs to have a recess in the spacer in order for the spacer bolts to sit flush with the surface that you bolt your wheel to. This means that the thickness of the spacer being bolted to the hub is about half. This could not cope with the cornering forces on track and simply tore way.

Although spacers are safe for general use, this plainly shows that they are not suitable for track use. Manufacturers of spacers will also state this too.

Anyway, as I say, I just wanted to share this with you as I thought it may be worth making you all aware of this.


Brace yourself.......


WARNING - Aluminium Wheel spacers - GT-R Register - Official Nissan Skyline and GTR Owners Club forum


P.S... there is a 3rd type of spacer.. the nasty kind that are basically just over-sized washers. I think we all know to stay the hell away from those as they are not hubcentric and, at the very least, can cause balancing issues resulting in vibrations in the steering wheel etc.

 

[Sbryantgb]

Not questioning wether one should or shouldn't use spacers, but on a GTR? Why would someone think that they can improve on Nissans setup with spacers? That car can pull so many G's.

 

[markjay]

In addition to the aesthetics of a wider stance, and the supposedly increased stability provided by the wider wheel base, I believe spacers are also used to push-out the wheels and prevent the too-wide tyres from rubbing against the inner wheel-arch or strut.

But this is the sort of price one pays for interfering with the manufacturers' design. Not a problem if you know what you are doing, but not everyone is Tony Bones...

 

[Rashman]

Not questioning wether one should or shouldn't use spacers, but on a GTR? Why would someone think that they can improve on Nissans setup with spacers? That car can pull so many G's.

Yeah, you're right.

Apparenty, this guy bought the GT-R with the spacers already on the car.

Really not necessary on a car like this.

 

[Rashman]

.. I believe spacers are also used to push-out the wheels and prevent the too-wide tyres from rubbing against the inner wheel-arch or strut.

..

You're right too.

Some coilovers require wheel spacers to create enough clearance between the inside of the Wheel/tyre and the coilover.

I have nothing against spacers at all but I don't think I'd like to use them on the front hubs, due to the additional lateral forces going through the front hubs.

 

[NISFAN]

It is a shame we have lawyers and legal systems eager to pounce on 'trip or fall at work' type cases, yet people who know nothing about engineering can trade substandard/poorly engineered products that could quite easily result in death. Why isn't there legislation/prosecution against this?

 

[markjay]

It is difficult to legislate common sense.

Of you go down that route there will be a very long list of things that will become illegal - every power increasing mod for starters, from ECU remapping through bigger turbo to K&N filters, because you can't trust the owner to have upgraded the brakes to suite the higher engine output, etc.

You'd have to be very strict and stipulate that no deviation from the manufacturer's original spec is permitted.

 

[NISFAN]

It is difficult to legislate common sense.

Of you go down that route there will be a very long list of things that will become illegal - every power increasing mod for starters, from ECU remapping through bigger turbo to K&N filters, because you can't trust the owner to have upgraded the brakes to suite the higher engine output, etc.

You'd have to be very strict and stipulate that no deviation from the manufacturer's original spec is permitted.

In Germany it is simple you need TUV. Only properly engineered parts supplied by responsible (TUV self approval) companies are able to sell this type of stuff.

Not sure I agree on the upgraded brakes from an ECU re-map or a K&N filter, but understand the logic.

 

[Dr-Nab]

Well that has made me reconsider pushing ahead with fitting the H&R spacers I've had sat around for a while tomorrow afternoon...

 

[markjay]

TUV approval is granted to individual components, not to the modified vehicle as a complete system. Also, TUV approved parts can be fitted in applications that they were not designed for.

As for the power increase, it is a matter of principle, if you upgrade the car's performance you need to ensure that the suspension, brakes, and tyres can handle the additional power safely, at which point the law can not be as specific as saying that free-flow rear box is OK but bigger intercooler is not... so ultimately we'd have to say that ANY power increase should be ticked-off by a qualified authority etc.

This is why I think that common sense Is the best practical solution.

 

[Rashman]

Well that has made me reconsider pushing ahead with fitting the H&R spacers I've had sat around for a while tomorrow afternoon...

You'll be fine if you are planning to put them on the rears.
Just maybe reconsider if you were thinking of putting them on your front hubs.

Ensure that you clean the hub faces properly so that the spacers sit in place nicely and then ensure the bolts are torqued up correctly.. Usually 110nm

Re-check the torque on the bolts after 100 miles or so, as with any time you remove wheels.

 

[NISFAN]

TUV approval is granted to individual components, not to the modified vehicle as a complete system. Also, TUV approved parts can be fitted in applications that they were not designed for. .

Agreed....however, in the case of this GTR, the spacer involved would never have passed ANY fitment standards. So not just a case of wrong use. TUV would have stopped this crap from being marketed.

As for the power increase, it is a matter of principle, if you upgrade the car's performance you need to ensure that the suspension, brakes, and tyres can handle the additional power safely, at which point the law can not be as specific as saying that free-flow rear box is OK but bigger intercooler is not... so ultimately we'd have to say that ANY power increase should be ticked-off by a qualified authority etc.

This is why I think that common sense Is the best practical solution.

Hmmmm, this is an entire debate on it's own. I take it your assumption is that as a performance part is fitted to a car, the car is going to be used beyond the legal 'common sense' expected of regular road users?

Fact is, in a one off emergency braking event from say 60mph to 0, a 8 piston dinner plate sized racing disc is not going to bring a car to a halt any sooner than a modern ABS fitted OEM system. The OEM system is capable of locking the wheels. If we are talking about a braking event way in excess of the legal limits, then this scenario, of course, does not apply, but that would be illegal in the first place.

A re-mapped, K&N filtered, big bore exhaust saloon with standard brakes will still outbreak a standard Ford Transit with a 1 ton load on board by a large margin, so don't fully understand the big brakes theory. There are many Transit type vehicles that sit on your ass on the motorway at 90MPH.....now that is something that needs addressing

 

[NISFAN]

You'll be fine if you are planning to put them on the rears.
Just maybe reconsider if you were thinking of putting them on your front hubs.

Ensure that you clean the hub faces properly so that the spacers sit in place nicely and then ensure the bolts are torqued up correctly.. Usually 110nm

Re-check the torque on the bolts after 100 miles or so, as with any time you remove wheels.

Interested to understand why you think the front hubs are more critical than the rears.

 

[Tazz666]

Interested to understand why you think the front hubs are more critical than the rears.

the front is what points the car in the correct direction I would think?
Mind youI cant really say anything as I had a set of hubcentric spacers on my 300ZXTT

 

[hotrodder]

Decent spacers are generally made from billit aluminium.

'Billet' doesn't mean much, it's just a term for a chunk of metal that has been rolled or drawn/extruded to a convenient shape for further processing. The usual suspect with aluminium for a lot of products is 6082 which is kinda a 'workhorse' alloy possesing a good blend of strength, machinability, workability, weldability, corrosion resistance etc. There are better flavours of aluminium for this sort of thing but they are harder to find and spendier... 2024-T3 comes to mind, it's corrosion resistance isn't as good but it's a lot stronger and more importantly retains it's strength at high temps better

Having said that i still wouldn't trust bolt together (two sets of wheel bolts/studs) spacers/adaptors at all on anything more powerful than a shopping trolley. The 'bolt through' type are fine in 6082-T6 as long as they're hubcentric and used to correct small problems with offset/ET... use 'em to widen the track and wheel bearings may be less happy in the long term

The big brakes thing is about temperature managment/brake fade either through stopping once from higher speeds or lots of repeated stops. I suppose these days there's also an element of coping with the various nannying aids that apply brakes to compensate for lack of talent
Lets face it though, on most road cars it's more about filling up drug dealer sized wheels

 

[Rashman]

Interested to understand why you think the front hubs are more critical than the rears.

Hey buddy, hope you are well

As Tazz said, I am of the understanding that a lot more load is placed on the front wheel bolts/ hubs due to the fact that the front wheels are the turning wheels.

As the front wheels turn, weight is pushed across the hub as weight is shifted. The greater the speed/ harder the turn, the greater the forces... crucially under braking (although you are supposed to do most of your braking in a straight line and then execute your turn).

Although lateral forces are also being applied to the rears during a cornering situation, the rear wheels are always forward facing and don't physically turn, hence not as much forces being applied here.

Of course, if one were to drift a car for example, more forces would be applied through the rear hubs.

But basically, alot more load is applied through the front hubs as the wheels physically turn. Plus the fact that there are at the front and will always have more weight of the vehicle exerted upon them.

This is my understanding anyway, and welcome any corrective views... afterall, this is a discussion forum

 

[mazza]

Hey buddy, hope you are well

As Tazz said, I am of the understanding that a lot more load is placed on the front wheel bolts/ hubs due to the fact that the front wheels are the turning wheels.

As the front wheels turn, weight is pushed across the hub as weight is shifted. The greater the speed/ harder the turn, the greater the forces... crucially under braking (although you are supposed to do most of your braking in a straight line and then execute your turn).

Although lateral forces are also being applied to the rears during a cornering situation, the rear wheels are always forward facing and don't physically turn, hence not as much forces being applied here.

Of course, if one were to drift a car for example, more forces would be applied through the rear hubs.

But basically, alot more load is applied through the front hubs as the wheels physically turn. Plus the fact that there are at the front and will always have more weight of the vehicle exerted upon them.

This is my understanding anyway, and welcome any corrective views... afterall, this is a discussion forum

Hi

Its a bit more complex in the case the Nissan GTR.

The big clue is at the start of the Nissan thread. The man wanted to drive the GTR in anger around cadwell, this means transfering massive amounts of torque to the from wheels.. maximum split being 50/50. so front wheels have to steer and cope with huge waves of torque.

a bit of a **** for having spacers in the first place..."even" if he didnt know about it....yeah right!!! not buying that one...a bit of stance tuning gone wrong...

mazza

 

[Rashman]

Hi

Its a bit more complex in the case the Nissan GTR.

The big clue is at the start of the Nissan thread. The man wanted to drive the GTR in anger around cadwell, this means transfering massive amounts of torque to the from wheels.. maximum split being 50/50. so front wheels have to steer and cope with huge waves of torque.

a bit of a **** for having spacers in the first place..."even" if he didnt know about it....yeah right!!! not buying that one...a bit of stance tuning gone wrong...

mazza

Hey buddy,

Yeah, good point. The issue was made worse by the 4wd nature of the car

 

[markjay]

Agreed....however, in the case of this GTR, the spacer involved would never have passed ANY fitment standards. So not just a case of wrong use. TUV would have stopped this crap from being marketed.

Agreed, but you are assuming the failure is due to low-quality product, but there's always the possibility that this was a one-off manufacturing defect.

At any rate there's nothing stopping people from buying quality (branded) products from reputable manufacturers - with TUV if it makes them feel better? I was not suggesting that there's anything wrong with the TUV system, just that common sense should prevail rather then legislation.

Hmmmm, this is an entire debate on it's own. I take it your assumption is that as a performance part is fitted to a car, the car is going to be used beyond the legal 'common sense' expected of regular road users?

No, but I would argue that a vehicle must be able to fully support its performance. In the same way as you will be required to fit W-rated tyres if this is what the manufacturer specified for your car, and not fit T-rated tyres just because you never accede the NSL anyway.

Fact is, in a one off emergency braking event from say 60mph to 0, a 8 piston dinner plate sized racing disc is not going to bring a car to a halt any sooner than a modern ABS fitted OEM system. The OEM system is capable of locking the wheels. If we are talking about a braking event way in excess of the legal limits, then this scenario, of course, does not apply, but that would be illegal in the first place.

As you well know, the issue with brakes isn't one stopping distance, but of brake fade. The vented, grooved, and drilled discs, and air ducts, are all aimed primarily at reducing overheating, not simply improving stopping power.

The idea again is that if a car is capable of performance driving it should be also capable to handle the braking (and suspension) requirements that may arise in such a scenario.

If the claim is that you would upgrade your car to 500bhp but will not need to upgrade the braking system because you will never drive it in anger anyway, then I would refer you to the section above...

A re-mapped, K&N filtered, big bore exhaust saloon with standard brakes will still outbreak a standard Ford Transit with a 1 ton load on board by a large margin, so don't fully understand the big brakes theory. There are many Transit type vehicles that sit on your ass on the motorway at 90MPH.....now that is something that needs addressing

To my mind, the fact that there are more-dangerous vehicles out there does not come into it.... such issues should be addressed separately. At any rate, being able to out-brake a 1-Ton loaded transit at 90mph is hardly a reasonable bench mark for anything....


But I am not sure what we are discussing here. You do not disagree I hope that - as a general rule - engine power, braking, and suspension should all match the characteristics of the car, regardless less of how it is actually being driven by its current owner?

And please note that my original post was to say that the matter should be left to common sense and not legislation, because if legislation is involved, then due to the complexity of upgrading/modifying cars, the only way to deal with it would be to legislate against the whole lot.

 

[NISFAN]

Hey buddy, hope you are well

As Tazz said, I am of the understanding that a lot more load is placed on the front wheel bolts/ hubs due to the fact that the front wheels are the turning wheels.

As the front wheels turn, weight is pushed across the hub as weight is shifted. The greater the speed/ harder the turn, the greater the forces... crucially under braking (although you are supposed to do most of your braking in a straight line and then execute your turn).

Although lateral forces are also being applied to the rears during a cornering situation, the rear wheels are always forward facing and don't physically turn, hence not as much forces being applied here.

Of course, if one were to drift a car for example, more forces would be applied through the rear hubs.

But basically, alot more load is applied through the front hubs as the wheels physically turn. Plus the fact that there are at the front and will always have more weight of the vehicle exerted upon them.

This is my understanding anyway, and welcome any corrective views... afterall, this is a discussion forum

I'm good Rashman, cheers

If we were on an Audi forum with crappy front wheel drive cars, I would agree that the fronts take more load than the rears, afterall, a front wheel drive car is not designed to have a 50/50 weight distribution, in the case of FWD the heavier in front the better.

However, as we drive rear wheel drive cars, and even the Nissan GTR with AWD it is designed to have a 50/50 weight balance, the loadings can be the same front and rear.

If a car oversteers, it means the rear tyres have exceeded their slip angle, and therefore have been over loaded, or past ultimate G loadings that that tyre can take. Bear in mind also that a rear wheel drive car will often have larger rear tyres.

As you rightly mention, drifting the rear can cause massive loads on the rear wheel.....anyone that has had the back end out and bottled it (come off the throttle quickly) will know how violent the rear will bite.

The other thing a spacer on the correct offset wheel does is extend the levers to the supporting points, putting more load for a given situation on the suspension in all driving conditions.

It gets more complex, the designers would have specified a wheel bearing inner and outer based on the loadings the offset of the wheel places on them. It is not un common to find larger inner bearings as these will 'see' more loads, as the offset means the inner face of the wheel will see the bigger loads. A wheel spacer is likely to upset this design and transfer the loads to the outer wheel bearing, which were never sized to see these loads. Result? Wheel bearing failure.

BTW this is not likely to show up in practice, as suspension designers use a safety factor for these parts in any case, so you might just be edging closer to design capability. I have just mentioned it to show a wider picture of what effect wheel spacers can have.

What gets me is the spacers used should not have been fitted to a reliant Robin never mind any 'decent' car. They are clearly the the result of a salesman asking a machine shop to produce a thinner bolt on spacer as 10-15mm spacers are the biggest sellers. As this machine shop are most likely based in the far east and have no concept of what would be safe, all is good. Blind leading the blind. On top of this I would wager that the better ally grades were not used to make these. Aircraft grade ally is much more expensive than steel.