Wheel spacers can be a highly contentious topic. Many say that they are perfectly safe to use, while others insist that they will ruin your vehicle’s handling, making it unsafe to drive. Which is true? As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Wheel spacers are generally safe to use, as long as they’re quality parts that are installed and used properly.
Those are some important qualifiers. Cheap cast-aluminum spacers from some no-name brand on eBay or Temu don’t count. They also need to fit your particular vehicle properly. A 2-inch spacer is rather large. A 12-foot spacer is right out. The hub bore should match the size of your hubs. The lug nuts or wheel bolts all need to be torqued to spec. The wheel studs or bolts need to be long enough to ensure enough thread engagement to hold the wheel on safely, but not so long that they push the spacer or wheel even farther out.
Justin Hughes
We use wheel spacers on my wife’s Toyota 4Runner. We’re still running the stock wheels, but the all-terrain tires are slightly oversized. She doesn’t baby this car (that’s why it’s so dirty). She’s driven across the country a few times, and we’ve gone off-roading in the Arizona desert. Because she uses the right wheel spacers, they have never given us any trouble.
What wheel spacers are and how they work
Wheel spacers are exactly what they say on the package. They’re discs, typically made of strong billet aluminum, that sandwich between the wheels and the brake rotors or drums. This makes the wheels poke farther out than stock, widening the vehicle’s track width. One common reason to use wheel spacers is to prevent wider wheels and tires from rubbing against steering and suspension components.
Spacers come in various thicknesses, depending on how far out you want your wheels to sit. Thin spacers can be no more than a disc with holes drilled out for the wheel studs or bolts. Thicker spacers, like the ones on our 4Runner, slide over the wheel studs and then bolt to them with their own low-profile lug nuts. Then, on the outside, they have their own set of studs that the wheel slides onto. The wheel bolts onto the spacer’s studs instead of the original ones on the car.
A convenient side effect of this is that spacers can also let you use wheels that have a different bolt pattern than stock. Some call these wheel adapters rather than spacers, but they still do the same job as spacers in moving the wheels farther away from the hubs in the process. This can be especially handy if your vehicle uses an uncommon bolt pattern, opening access to a wider selection of wheels with standard patterns. They also let you run GM wheels on a Ford, if you want to annoy the purists. The right wheel spacers can even convert a car with inconvenient wheel bolts into studs instead.
What to watch out for
As with anything, there are trade-offs, and some of the naysayers’ paranoia is rooted in fact. Using spacers that are too thick can cause the tires to rub against the fender lips as they protrude outside the wheel well. Moving the wheels farther out can increase the scrub radius, making turning more difficult at low speeds. This is less of a factor for track cars, which spend most of their time going fast, and off-road vehicles, since loose surfaces provide less resistance to steering.
Moving the wheels farther out also increases leverage on the wheel bearings and suspension. This puts more strain on the wheel bearings and can cause them to wear out more quickly. The extra leverage also applies more force to the shocks and springs, essentially making the suspension behave as if it were a little bit softer than it actually is. Upgrading to a stiffer suspension can mitigate this effect. Using wheel spacers can also reduce the vehicle’s towing and hauling capacities, something truck owners in particular should keep in mind.
Wheel spacers can cause problems like these to occur, but with some planning and using the proper size, you can avoid these problems, as I have. The key is to use the smallest possible spacer that will accomplish your goals while also avoiding most of the downsides.