Do you think I can use spacers here?

[Kern Dog]

He is becoming the real life version of Uncle Buck.  I painted his 64 Valiant in 2015:

[Troy]

You forgot the important parts...

What is the offset on your current wheels? What size tires?

I could probably search but I'm busy. And lazy.

Troy

[Dino]

 No I didn't! Well ok I didn't mention the front tire size anywhere in this thread.

17x8 with 4.74" bs and 245/45 on the front and 17x9.5 with 5.5" bs and 275/50 on the rear.

The spacers I linked are hub centric but the 1" spacers are also available in lug centric. Once a rotor is on the rear axle, not much of the hub is left to use a hub centric spacer on me thinks. If I can use a hub centric specer then I should find a ring to fit the hub on the spacer and the center hole in the wheel which is around 77mm.

You forgot the important parts...

What is the offset on your current wheels? What size tires?

I could probably search but I'm busy. And lazy.

Troy

My front wheels are 17x8 with 6mm offset which should convert to a backspacing of 4.74. The rears are 17x9.5 with 6mm offset which should be a backspacing of 5.5. I'm thinking a 1" spacer in the rear and 3/4" or 1" in the front should prevent the tire from rubbing and enhance the look nicely. I'd use the spacers I linked to, or something similar. I may have to cut my wheel studs to clear but that's easy enough to do.

Come to think of it, I probably should get disc brakes on the car first and see if that affects the position of the wheels.   

[alfaitalia]

The spacers go on top of the rotors...not underneath. So you will  still have the full "hub" of the spacer to locate the wheels on...unless I'm not understanding you correctly.

[Dino]

It was probably me, I confuse myself all the time!   

When you put a rotor on the rear axle, the axle hub barely protrudes through the rotor. So when you place the spacer on top of that, it would likely have to be lug centric since there's not enough axle hub for the spacer to grab on to. The wheel then goes onto the spacer but because there's a 6 or so mm difference, I'd need one of those hub rings to fill that gap. Now that's all fine, but the wheels is lug centric as well and I'm not sure how precisely in the middle these wheel manufacturers make that center hole.

Am I making sense? Probably not.   

I'll try to explain the options with pictures, but not right now. Ive got a big exam tomorrow.   

[green69rt]

Just saw this thread.   IIRC the whole deal with spacing the wheel very far out on the spindle concerns the load that is carried by the two wheel bearings.    I think that the wheel should be centered over the inner wheel bearing, it's the biggest and was designed to carry the load.  The outer bearing is much smaller and is only meant to carry the load associated with keeping the wheel centered on the spindle, very little load carrying capacity (OK there is obviously some.)   If you space out the wheels/tires it shifts the center of the wheel towards the outer bearing and increases the load on it while taking load off the inner bearing.  Seems to be a formula for wheel bearing failure.  If you do this you need to make sure those puppies are thoroughly greased.  

Maybe I'm blowing hot air  

[Dino]

Yeah I thought about that. I'm not sure what to do with the whole thing. IF I install spacers I'm definitely not going over 1" and I'd want to check the spacers and bearings periodically.

This wouldn't be an issue if I could afford custom wheels.   

[alfaitalia]

I used to hear that all the time over on the Jeep forum..but some of those guys are using huge spacers to increase track or using wheels with next to no back spacing (same effect). So far there has been no real evidence that I have seen that the bearings of these vehicles are wearing any faster than the stockers......and the bearings in a lots of these Jeeps see a lot more abuse than any road car probably ever will.

[green69rt]

I used to hear that all the time over on the Jeep forum..but some of those guys are using huge spacers to increase track or using wheels with next to no back spacing (same effect). So far there has been no real evidence that I have seen that the bearings of these vehicles are wearing any faster than the stockers......and the bearings in a lots of these Jeeps see a lot more abuse than any road car probably ever will.

My info is really old and things do change.  Better materials, etc.  It also depends on how you use your vehicle.  It's more info to consider.  But, our cars are old designs so I would be thoughtful about how I changed the suspension from stock without considering the effects.

Oh, and my comments only apply to the front.  The rear axle bearing setup is a completely different animal unless you're running a rear independent suspension setup.  As for jeeps and other off road types, I'd like to see their spindle and bearing setups.  Just wondering....

[redgum78]

I used to hear that all the time over on the Jeep forum..but some of those guys are using huge spacers to increase track or using wheels with next to no back spacing (same effect). So far there has been no real evidence that I have seen that the bearings of these vehicles are wearing any faster than the stockers......and the bearings in a lots of these Jeeps see a lot more abuse than any road car probably ever will.

My info is really old and things do change.  Better materials, etc.  It also depends on how you use your vehicle.  It's more info to consider.  But, our cars are old designs so I would be thoughtful about how I changed the suspension from stock without considering the effects.

Oh, and my comments only apply to the front.  The rear axle bearing setup is a completely different animal unless you're running a rear independent suspension setup.  As for jeeps and other off road types, I'd like to see their spindle and bearing setups.  Just wondering....

I think a couple of things come into play here regarding the fronts. The way I understand tapered roller bearings is as follows;
They have to work in pairs which is why they are ideal for both radial and axial loads (front wheels). They also share the load between the 2 bearing sets proportionally but not necessarily evenly. If the load is mainly centred over the larger inner bearing it will carry a higher % of the weight but a proportion of it will still be passed onto the outer bearing. As the location of the load moves outward the outer bearing will take additional weight but probably not as much as we think unless the wheels are massively offset. Also most bearing sets are over engineered by a fair margin which allows them to perform ok outside of their design range with out failing. IMO the bearings will be ok. They may last 50,000m instead of 80,000m which is no big deal. If it were mine I would Just check them more regularly.

[Draco]

  Dino, do you know for sure that you need a 1in spacer for the front for caliper clearance or is it just what you want for preferance? Mine are 13in rotors with 18x9's on front with 5in BS and wheel and tire fit well. But not sure how 17in rims clear.

[Dino]

I'm sure I can get away with a thinner spacer but I would like the wheels out a bit more. That said, if 1/2" clears the calipers and it's a better idea than the 1" spacer then I'll go with that. I can live with the front wheels where they are so any movement outwards is a bonus. I have the same wheels as Ryan C. and if you look in invincibleextremes' thread you can see he had to grind quite a bit of material off the calipers in order to clear the spokes. I think a spacer will make it an easy bolt on. I wish I could fit some Brembo calipers on the 13" rotor though as they have a lower profile. Lots of Brembo's for sale on ebay off of different cars.

The rears I'd like as close to the quarters as possible but I'll make 1" the max I'll go with a spacer.