Wheel hub spacers be warned!

[tmontague]

I purchased these spacers (1 pair) from seller BestForAuto off of ebay. They are 1.5cm and made my fitment upfront perfect. I currently am running +38 offset rims 15x6.5 with 185 rubber. With -2.5 degrees offset it fit perfectly with only minimal rubbing on bad dips on the highway and it was only touching the plastic inner fender never the metal. With this fitment I wouldn't be able to run a wider tire, but it fit fine with the 185.

Anyways, I used my torque wrench and torqued everything to the proper 76 ft/lbs. The car drove fine for a week travelling about 100km round trip every day including the horrendous Burlington St. in Hamilton which is probably the roughest road I've ever traveled on.

Since I've moved a couple weeks ago I've noticed that my front tires were wearing down fast and were feathered due to the increase in driving distance every day.

I never aligned my car after I lowered it last year and was monitoring tire wear and highway wander, everything seemed fine so I figured I'd wait until this summer since I had it aligned last summer.

I took my car into Active Green and Ross on the mountain to get it aligned. I hate to take my car to any shop or have anyone else touch it (still haven't done the two pending recalls) but I don't want to fork out thousands of $ I don't have for an alignment rack. So $100 every year or so isn't too bad to have it done.

I forgot to ask them to leave the camber alone (I had it set to max -2.5 to avoid rubbing with the spacer). They adjusted my toe which was about -1 degrees both sides and corrected it to -0.05 degrees. The rear was toe in 0.25 and 0.35 which is good enough.

After picking up the car I realized that they had corrected the camber to about -1.7 which i realized I'd had to fix since I didn't want to have any extra rub. When driving home from the shop and the next day (~45km) I would hear a wump wump wump type sound when cornering under speed. The steering wasn't vibrating travelling straight so I kept on driving and figured if anything was wrong I'd see it when I fixed the camber.

Took the drivers side wheel off (lug bolts all were tight and I used an impact gun to remove them). I noticed 2 cracks through the whole spacer, when I removed the lug nuts holding on the spacer the spacers crumbled into 3 pieces.

When I went to remove the passengers side wheel 2 of the lug nuts were so lose I could remove the with a socket in my hand.

I had to cut the lug bolts to install the spacers so now with the spacers removed I couldn't fit the rim back on. An hour later and thanks to an air chisel, I removed the oem cut lug bolts and installed the ones that came with the spacers. I left the camber where it was since I don't need the max negative camber I was running before.

Appearance wise it looks just as good since the camber is adjusted and I can now run a 205 tire. I feel a lot better and safer driving with no more wheel spacers and the car tracks way better then before the alignment.

I called the shop today and asked to speak with a manager, I have to call back tomorrow morning to speak with him then as he wasn't in the office.

I'm beyond frustrated as I had my 3.5 month pregnant wife in the car with me. I won't be a happy customer calling them tomorrow, negligence is a bs excuse.

What I believe happened is the shop over torqued my drivers side wheels causing the spacers to split, and they under torqued (correction-never torqued) my passenger side wheels.

Also the hub spacers are cheap fragile metal that have no business holding on a wheel. They were hub centric and I run rings, so the weight is all on the hub and not the lug bolts.

TL, DR:

shop improperly torqued my wheels after alignment, leading to crumbled hub spacer and potential car accident with my pregnant wife in car. Moral of the story, trust no shop unless you specifically know the mechanic working on the car and trust no hub spacer.

I will never be running hub spacers again on any car I have, I learned my lesson, thankfully my family and my car are not damaged.

[Exiwolfman]

sorry for what has happen but how can you blame a shop for running aftermarket spacers on your car, also when doing alignment there is no need to remove wheels .
I say blame the company that made the spacers not the shop plus parts like that for most part are not street legal, just like i will not do an alignment on cars with race specific coilovers . Im not gone take the blame for inferior parts ppl place on there cars and crazy car setups like extreme camber or car to low .

Just my opinion on a sensitive topic cos we all do it but there is the right and wrong way of going about it.

So please dont thake this the wrong way ...just my two cents

PS see this with lifted trucks in my area and guess what the shop is always to blame cos ur on 35s and six inch lift ...ya no!

[Exiwolfman]

sorry for what has happen but how can you blame a shop for running aftermarket spacers on your car, also when doing alignment there is no need to remove wheels .
I say blame the company that made the spacers not the shop plus parts like that for most part are not street legal, just like i will not do an alignment on cars with race specific coilovers . Im not gone take the blame for inferior parts ppl place on there cars and crazy car setups like extreme camber or car to low .

Just my opinion on a sensitive topic cos we all do it but there is the right and wrong way of going about it.

So please dont thake this the wrong way ...just my two cents

PS see this with lifted trucks in my area and guess what the shop is always to blame cos ur on 35s and six inch lift ...ya no!

[enviri]

quality spacers ftw.

[enviri]

quality spacers ftw.

[tmontague]

Point well taken and I agree that it definitely isn't the shop solely to blame.

In my original post I stated blame on 2 parties. Shoddy ebay crap (which I stated I will never run again) and the shop for not properly torquing my wheels.

They would have removed the wheels to adjust the camber and even if they didn't over toque and split the spacer, they didn't torque 2 lug nuts and they were about 1km away from falling off.

2 issues here, one my fault for running spacers that I never felt good about from the get go and the other being a total lack of competence by a shop.

I'm lucky that this ended without an accident and it furthers my mind set of if you want something done right then do it yourself.

[tmontague]

Point well taken and I agree that it definitely isn't the shop solely to blame.

In my original post I stated blame on 2 parties. Shoddy ebay crap (which I stated I will never run again) and the shop for not properly torquing my wheels.

They would have removed the wheels to adjust the camber and even if they didn't over toque and split the spacer, they didn't torque 2 lug nuts and they were about 1km away from falling off.

2 issues here, one my fault for running spacers that I never felt good about from the get go and the other being a total lack of competence by a shop.

I'm lucky that this ended without an accident and it furthers my mind set of if you want something done right then do it yourself.

[Exiwolfman]

Agreed 👍 glad ur safe and all we can do is learn not to repeat.
And no more spacers lol 😁

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

[WeeYari]

A bit of a misleading blanket statement 'wheel spacers be warned'. The thinner, up to about 13mm spacers, do not need to be bolted to the hub themselves. All the mounting pressure is on the face of the spacer as it is the wheel itself taking the stress of the lug nuts.

[tmontague]

True, and I would must rather use those type of spacers then ones that bolt to the hub.

Do those smaller spacers come hub centric? The one I've seen do not and they would effectively remove the hub lip on the hub leading to no longer having hub centric benefits

[WeeYari]

Originally Posted by tmontague

Do those smaller spacers come hub centric?

Pay the price, and yes you can get hub centric. Mine are 10mm Ichiba, and are hub centric.

[tmontague]

Update:

Figured i'd post the response from the shop in fairness.

Called them this morning and the manager had spoke to the tech who apparently worked on the car (no tech name was on the work order). He said he never removed the wheels even to adjust the camber bolt.

To their credit, they were respectful to deal with on the phone and took the time to listen to the issue.

I find it hard to believe that they adjusted the camber bolt with the wheel on the vehicle, it's near impossible to wrench those bolts with the car raised (although technically it's possible)

They may very well be telling the truth, I just find it hard to believe that my wheels which I torqued to 76 ft/lbs and re torqued a week later ended up being so loose I could remove 2 lug nuts with my hands.

Lessons learned, at least the alignment was done well and the car tracks better now!

[tmontague]

Originally Posted by WeeYari

Pay the price, and yes you can get hub centric. Mine are 10mm Ichiba, and are hub centric.

Are you on oem length lug bolts?

[Rigaud]

Well.........30 years experience here with spacers, use to make them long time ago and I agree with several responses. a) cheap ebay crap which is most likely made in China. b) Thin spacers should always be non bolted to the hub and use the original studs, plenty of threads for your application. c) Certain parts where safety is concerned..........pay the price or don`t do it.

Yes you can adjust the camber with wheels on and not too hard to do. I used up to 2" hubcentric spacers on Audi's, bolted on because of the thickness and pressed in studs. over 400hp and years of use with zero stress or issues. Last summer out where I live I saw two issues in the summer from people who bought off ebay cheap spacers even one bolt on that barely had material to hold on with the bolts. Well they broke off leaving the car slammed in the sidewalk.

My 2017 winter project calls for 50mm(2") spacers for a wide body conversion on an Audi.

Not much you can do other then swallow the pill and learn from this!!!

[Rigaud]

Well.........30 years experience here with spacers, use to make them long time ago and I agree with several responses. a) cheap ebay crap which is most likely made in China. b) Thin spacers should always be non bolted to the hub and use the original studs, plenty of threads for your application. c) Certain parts where safety is concerned..........pay the price or don`t do it.

Yes you can adjust the camber with wheels on and not too hard to do. I used up to 2" hubcentric spacers on Audi's, bolted on because of the thickness and pressed in studs. over 400hp and years of use with zero stress or issues. Last summer out where I live I saw two issues in the summer from people who bought off ebay cheap spacers even one bolt on that barely had material to hold on with the bolts. Well they broke off leaving the car slammed in the sidewalk.

My 2017 winter project calls for 50mm(2") spacers for a wide body conversion on an Audi.

Not much you can do other then swallow the pill and learn from this!!!

[WeeYari]

Originally Posted by tmontague

Are you on oem length lug bolts?

No.

[tmontague]

How much longer bolts are you running? And any issues installing them in regards to having to remove the hub?

[johnny_vitz]

Originally Posted by tmontague

Update:


I find it hard to believe that they adjusted the camber bolt with the wheel on the vehicle, it's near impossible to wrench those bolts with the car raised (although technically it's possible)

I have camber bolts in my echo, and regularly adjust them on the alignment rack without removing the wheels (for what its worth) There is room to access from underneath the vehicle once its on the hoist. Close call, glad nobody was hurt!