3mm spacer purchase advice needed
 

After reading many threads, it seems that 3mm spacers can be simply slipped on without the need to use extended studs. The OEM lug nuts can be installed normally and everything will be fine. Is this correct?


It seems that the hub extends 10mm to accept the wheel. After 3mm is taken by the spacer, only 7mm is left. Then how 'thick' is the wheel where it is mounted to the hub? Just curious.


There are two choices on Amazon. First a cheaper one, $7.5 for a pair


https://www.amazon.com/UberTechnic-5...dp/B01NBG02ZB/


next one is $17 for 2.


https://www.amazon.com/StanceMagic-H...dp/B01M623A6I/


I am confused why the 2nd is more expensive (and maybe better)?


Thanks for any advice!

Yes you can have a 3mm spacer for stock. The only thing you need them for is a 17x9 +45 wheel to clear a factory strut in front. I have those exact cheaper ones on mine. No Issues. The others are hub-centric, which you don't really need for a slip-on spacer.

if you want high quality spacers and maintain the full 10mm of hub to wheel

http://www.motorsport-tech.com/4DCGI...s_err_ymm.html

Be aware the minimum thickness necessary to machine a lip for being hub centric is 6mm.


For 3mm you don't need the spacers to be hubcentric because the hubface extends past the spacer itself. These are ONLY really useful on stock suspension to get a 17x9 +45 offset wheel flush (+42 is correct flush offset) as mentioned earlier in the thread. There is basically no other reason to ever use a 3mm spacer on this platform.


If you're planning to lower the car or otherwise change the suspension geometry, you should do the appropriate calculations to find the spacers you need and then yes, order from Motorsport Tech, top notch quality and worth every penny. I trust my life to their products on the race track. I would not trust my life to whatever is cheapest on Amazon.

They are very useful for fitting wheels over big brakes

This usually requires a 10mm spacer in most applications. Obviously spacers are available in many sizes for just such a reason, but for common wheel offsets including stock wheels, a 10mm spacer is usually most helpful. Of course once you change suspension geometry from stock it becomes a much wider variety...

I guess I still do not get the meaning of hub centric for a spacer. For a wheel, hub centric, to me, means the opening of the center hole has the same diameter as the diameter of the hub. Or very slightly larger.



So for a spacer, as long as its center opening is the same, it should be hub centric. For the 2 Amazon ones, in fact the center openings for both are beveled. So I think as long as the smaller end has the same diameter, it is hub centric. In fact, both spacers have 'hub centric' in their titles. So what I don't understand are the following 2 remarks.


1. "maintain the full 10mm of hub to wheel"


How can I put a spacer and maintain full 10mm hub to wheel? The spacer will have to take away 3mm.



2. The minimum thickness necessary to machine a lip for being hub centric is 6mm.
What do you mean exactly in this sentence? Does it mean since I still have 7mm hub extended out of the spacer, adding a 3mm spacer is still hub centric. but adding a 5mm won't be since only 5mm is left?



It is also interesting that the guy in the following video says that we can use up to 5mm slip-on spacers with stock wheel studs.


https://www.ft86speedfactory.com/fac...l#.XYUCm2Z7lzk

No. I have tried several sets of wheels that only need a 3mm or even 2mm spacer to fit. See the PP brakes thread for a lot more.

What I said comes from my discussions with Motorsport Tech (I own many spacers from them in various sizes). It's about the machining process, has nothing to do with how much hub face will be exposed in a given size spacer.


Hubcentric means that the spacer is sized such that it's center bore matches the hub, and it provides a bevel on which the wheel's center bore sits. Most aftermarket wheels have a larger center bore than the size of your hub so you use hubcentric sizing rings to bring it into line (for instance commonly 73.1mm or 65mm for center bore of aftermarket wheels, our cars have a hub diameter of 56.1mm).


You can run up to a 5mm spacer on stock studs, however I think that's kind of sketchy and most of the better quality 5mm kits include slightly extended studs (like H&R Trax+). 3mm though does not need extended studs at all, nor do they need to be hubcentric, because the lip of the hub face will extend past the spacer.

I'm interested in hearing about those people that have died from using "cheaper" spacers.

FWIW I have 3mm spacers in front, but not because of the PP calipers. I needed them due to my camber settings and tire sidewall since without them the tire was very slightly brushing past the strut perch.

Well I read more about hub centric. There's hub centric for the spacer and hub centric for the wheel.

Any spacer that has the same center bore as the hub will be hub centric because the hub helps to center the spacer. Any spacer that is less than 10mm thick would be hub centric for the wheel automatically, because the hub will stick out and center the wheel. The space doesn't have to do anything.

Of course, if the hub only sticks out 1mm, it might not be long enough to really help to center the wheel. So someone might say you need to have at least 6mm of hub exposed to really center the wheel. So if the exposed hub is initially 10mm, any spacer thicker than 4mm is ineffective as to center the wheel in practice.

So any spacer thicker than 4mm requires extended studs for lug nuts to properly seat, and requires the sapcer to have a lip to center the wheel to be hub centric for the wheel.

Of course when the spacer is thick enough, it is easier to use a bolt-on spacer rather than a set of really long lug studs.

An interesting observation is that using spacer, especially the silp-on type is a lot easier for German cars. They can simply use longer lug bolts and there's no need to mess with lug studs and hub assembly.

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I don't know of anyone who has died, but I have seen people who used cheap bolt-on spacers have the lugs on the bolt-on spacers shear during hard braking. I've also seen a car get black flagged in for wheel wobble and it turned out their slip on had cracked and disintegrated which luckily was caught before anything truly bad happened... they had slightly damaged wheels and needed new spacers, but otherwise no harm. Both could have been catastrophic under different circumstances.

Generally speaking, if I'm putting something on a car going on a race track, I'm using the highest quality parts available. Taking unnecessary risks is just dumb.

Spacers are perfectly safe if they're properly made and properly installed... but otherwise they can be problematic.

I am using ARP extended studs and H&R slip on spacers myself so should be safe but was just curious since people always say catastrophic things happen when going cheap on spacers.

For a slip on to crack and disintegrate seems odd. Almost like a washer being a problem between a bolt and nut, doesn't happen much. Maybe they didn't tighten everything down and it wobbled enough to actually damage the spacer. Then blame was put on the cheapest part? I am 99% sure the dealer did me that way. Soon after a dealer oil change and I had them rotate the tires, I began having a clicking noise happen when I turned the car only one way, I think left if I remember correctly. Turned out the lugs were just a little more than hand tightened on that one wheel. It only went on for a couple days and a few miles before I realized what it was.
Shearing all the bolts off seems like it would be over torquing it all down like what happened here: https://www.newcougar.org/forums/pro...-fell-off.html
Every horror story online is from over torquing or not enough like what happened to me. I'd be willing to bet both of your examples were the same. Not to say I would cheap out on spacer or bolts. They are after all holding on what one could argue is the most important part of the car.

After reading this: on bimmerforums.com, I wonder now if buying my ARP studs at on Ebay online store was safe. Looked into to it even further and found this: https://www.thecounterfeitreport.com...486/Bolts.html
I didn't get them for cheap and of course not used but that link says to only buy the studs from a authorized dealer which I would imagine is not an Ebay store. What I bought: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ARP-Wheel-S...72.m2749.l2649
I paid $130 at the time, not sure why they're $160 currently as every other place right now is still about the same $130. Seller has 99.99% positive feedback so everything he sells should be on the up and up I would hope.

I bet this guy in the video below is the owner of such fake ARP product: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnwnb8myWKo[/ame]

Counterfeiting has gone rampant generally. I’ve received counterfeit parts on one occasion when I purchased directly from the manufacturer. They had an employee in their supply chain that was substituting counterfeits for the real deal and pocketing the difference, since the manufacture didn’t re-QC from their suppliers, they got commingled in the pool of legit parts. Amazon has massive issues with SKU commingling causing counterfeits to be shipped to buyers from legit vendors.

Boeing is not the only company that checks QC of their suppliers. I know. I’ve had to institute that system at two different companies I’ve worked for, one a manufacture of building supplies for residential construction and the other a computer storage manufacturer. Both had issues with tainted supply chains prior to incurring the large expense of re-QCing every batch of parts and materials they get from suppliers.

I have my beliefs as to why this has become an issue, but I will keep it to myself. I will just say that there’s no perfect solution as a customer, but I sure as fuck am never putting parts off eBay, Wish, or AliExpress on my car.

One more question. What about spacers like 7mm to 12mm? These are not thick enough to be made bolt-on type. They are also too thick as a slip-on. Extended studs can help. But there won't be enough hub left to make it hub centric for the wheel. For spacers thicker than 10mm, it seems possible that a lip can be matched. But then the slip can only be used to center the wheel literally. They cannot help to bear any weight. So the slip-on spacers more than 3mm (or 5mm, need to leave 6-8 turns on lug studs for the lug nuts) seems to be in a very awkward position.

OP, exactly what are you trying to do here with spacers or is this all to understand everything about spacers for educational purposes?

Initially I wanted to get 3mm spacer. But I give up that plan. Now it is just for education. BTW, I saw some 10mm spacers online. Looks the lip added to it has decent dimensions. So I guess the 'awkward' spacers are just 5mm or 7mm type.

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Some thoughts about spacers (in no particular order)

IDK for sure, but the thinnest spacer to have an extended hub I could find was a 10mm 5x100 56.1mm spacer. (similar to pictured below)

The 5mm spacer I had took up all but the very tip of he hub and didn't provide the wheel quite enough to feel like it was positively centered as with the thicker style spacers that I replaced them with. Not to say I had any issues with them, they worked fine for the few days I ran them.

Spacers are made in several different outside diameters. The first set I purchased looked like the ones you linked. When I installed them, the spacer was a bit bigger than the brake rotor hub. They looked terrible.

Then I searched "12mm hubcentric 5x100 56.1mm spacer". I found these.

https://i.imgflip.com/3betdi.jpg

After installing extended studs all around...

These slip-on spacers worked great and are the same diameter as the center of the brake rotor. And being as they have a 56.1mm center hub; they firmly seat on the hub of the car and provide a solid center hub for the wheel.

I also have used a set of bolt on style spacers. I liked them and they worked good. But, with 10 lug nuts per wheel (more stuff to worry about) And the (minor) difficulty of having my wife sit in the car and press the brake while I tightened the first set of lug nuts on the spacer. I feel that if you can use slip style spacers and extended studs; they are better.

The only reason, IMO, to have 10 holes in a spacer is: bolt on style spacers that allow the studs to go through and "sit" in the recessed pockets of a wheel.

For widebody applications: bolt on super thick spacers are the only way to go for some guys. I mean; custom offset wheels are EXPENSIVE!

I think these are a cool adjustable spacers; haven't seen any other like them.

https://store.partsshopmax.com/shop/...-5-125-56.html


:burnrubber: :popcorn: :thumbup:

Thanks for the experience. Very detailed and real life. One other thought I have about hub centric is that maybe it is not just 'centric'? I think it is quite dangerous for the lug nuts/studs to be responsible for bearing the weight all the time. The majority of the job of bearing the weight must be done by the hub, right? So a thin hub centric lip might be good enough to center the wheel, but it won't be able to carry the load all the time.

What is bearing weight is very high friction between wheel hub & wheel disk. Properly tightened wheel nuts just press strong enough wheel to hub to ensure that friction, they don't carry themselves any sideload/weights (unless they get undone :D).
As for "centric" part, it's more about how you get wheel centered when bolting on, to not get wheel bolted off-center/eccentric. Be it via same sized wheel center bore & axle size (or +some spacers with flanges), to make "hub-centric", where it doesn't matter much what shape bolt/nut flanges are and even flat, as stock on some brand cars, may work, or it's "lug-centric", where lug-nut holes in wheel disk and lugnuts are of specific shape, that wheel centers as you tighten them (in proper, star, fashion). In this category are for example our wheels/lugnuts of conical 60deg taper flanges. Ball shaped seats should act in similar fashion.

Oh, thanks. So you mean our wheels are both hub centric and lug centric?


Some people would recommend using a bit anti seize between hub and spacers. Is this damaging the load bearing ability?

"Some people would recommend" (enter BAD IDEA here).

Hub centric is convenience factor for mounting the wheel, the studs/lugs take ALL the load on every modern car.

https://949racing.com/Hub_Centering_Ring_FAQ.aspx

I've had a 5mm slip on spacer on my car for like three years, over 30k miles, arp studs and gorilla lugs, torque properly, don't slide the wheel on the threads of the studs and life should be golden. This reminds me that I should spend some time cleaning my studs next time I swap wheels.

Good information. Guess I am wrong. The centric lip on the hub is really just for convenience of centering the hub. This is totally against my intuition, but cannot argue against a wheel maker. Oh well.

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Well, that convenience also is not to completely write off. Eg. it might be big PITA to center/mount non hub-centric wheel on bmw with wheel bolts. And even if wheel maker tells it's not needed, if wheel centering flange helps you, your subjective piece of heart, why not spend few dollars for oneself to feel subjectively a bit more secure? :)

I have to add a little more about what Leonardo brought up about outside dimensions on the spacers. So overlooked and it doesn't help that the places you buy them from very rarely put that outside diameter.
That's why I ended up with the H&Rs as they are super close to that brake rotor hub diameter as mentioned which if you like attention to detail, it really matters.

As far as the anti-seize between on the on the hub and spacer, I didn't think that was an issue. I applied a super thin coat there and even some on the other side of the spacer sitting against the wheel.
I did that as after about a year I had the spacer on it was already starting to stick from corrosion to the hub. Now after unbolting everything, it all comes off very clean. I'm not talking about using the brush it comes
with but like dabbing one finger pad in there and barely wiping it on like women would apply foundation makeup, or man if you are into that.

I think this video is a good example of why maybe somebody would think it's a bad idea. He looks like he is making ribs and is applying the bbq sauce on them at the last 15 min. of cooking. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLbzI5Y0ZLg[/ame]
My favorite comment on that video is "Did you die?" It's hilarious how much he slathered it on.