5mm spacer on stock studs in the rear?
 

Howdy,

I picked up an H&R Trak+ 5mm spacer for the rear to get flusher fitment with my new wheels. It came with replacement studs which are slightly longer than stock, but I'm trying to avoid having to remove the rear hub (and deal with the axle nut) in order to swap the studs. Is a 5mm hubcentric slip spacer on the rear safe for track use with the stock studs? If not, I guess it's axle nut PITA time.

Alternatively, it looks like the replacement studs that come with the H&R spacer are 50mm in length, the stock rear studs are 43mm in length (according to another thread here). I'm guessing I may be able to install without removing the hub, in which case it won't be the end of the world to swap them. I see some folks saying 3mm is max for stock studs some folks saying 5mm...

No, you will have not enough thread engagement left.

I installed extended studs a few weeks ago, was not that hard.

Did you have to remove the rear hub to install the studs. Which studs did you use?

Yes, you have to remove the hubs. I got ARP extended studs, linky.

Just put 5MM spacers on the rear and did not remove the hubs. There is one spot in between the brake assembly where the new stud will just fit in, Barely.

If you dont have issues with brake clearance or rubbing without the spacers on whatever offset wheels you have, why add another point of failure for track? I'd suggest to run without them. Plus its just annoying swapping on and off the spacers. I need them for my fronts to clear the wrx calipers on my daily driving set of wheels. For track I don't use them since my other set of wheels clear the brakes and there are enough reliability items I'm worried about. If you do use them, don't forget anti-seize.

My only reason for running the spacer is to make my fitment in the rear more flush. On stock suspension you want +44 in the front and +37 in the rear w/ an 8.5" wheel for perfect flushness. Since my wheels are +44 offset, running a 5mm spacer in the back gets me to +39 in the rear. Adding the 5mm spacer adds 6.5mm of scrub radius in the rear, which is inconsequential from a handling perspective. I'm generally confident that high-quality spacers aren't going to be any more likely to fail than the wheel itself, but I do want to make sure I have enough thread engagement to be safe.

Given what's been put in the thread above, I'm going to put in the extended studs and hopefully won't need to remove the hub to do so. I'll wait awhile to do it though since I've got other projects in the interim.