That is great, 1.5" 5X4.5" adapters in the front with 2.0" 5X4.5" adapters in the rear for a lowered Maverick. What brand adapters are you using? When I ordered my 2" the center hole was bigger making them not hub centric. Do you think I should get the center sleeves to make them hubcentric?
If it will make you feel better. The lugs do the centering. Mine are the same way with a huge center hole.
Don't know the brand, got them from Ebay. Mine are the same way, but I'm not worried about it. It's the pressure of the surfaces held tight by the lugs that bears the load, not the wheel against the hub. I have run the 1.5" spacers for about 2 years I guess, and never had a problem with vibration, warping, cracking, anything like that. I've never had a problem with a wheel bearing either, and this is on a car that I drive in a rather spirited manner most every day. Basically I think if there was going to be an issue, given my luck and the way I drive, it surely would have hit me by now.
It makes me feel a lot better. That is what I was thinking, VW has always used lug centric and I used to own a VW Bus that I swapped the steel wheels with 16" 2004 audi wineglass mag wheels. I had to machine the center hole so it could work like a VW wheel. I never had a problem with it. In this case it wasn't just the wheel, it was also the adapter and that was making me feel a little worried.
OK, I read this thread and nobody has mentioned how their car drives and handles with the 17 inch mustang wheels on their car. I did not like the way my car felt with the 17's I was running, so I changed to some cragers I had and its like a totally different car, seems much better. Anyone?.......Dave
I really dont think the 17's are the problem, I think it has something to do with the backspacing and the required spacers that somehow mess-up the handling.....could also be that the 17's were a LOT wider than the 15's I have on there now. I really like the looks of the mustang 17's, bummer.
If you don't mind I'll share what I just wrote in response to your PM... I don't really have a basis for comparison. I would imagine 15's, having a tire with more sidewall, would provide a softer ride. But I never really drove my Maverick with any other wheels. When I first bought the car, it had gaudy 20" wheels with little rubber band tires and it drove awful. When I came to pick it up, I had already bought these Mustang wheels and the first thing I did was install them for the ride home. Then the 20's went straight to eBay. The car still didn't drive all that great though. Bump steer was terrible, it wandered a lot despite having new front suspension components, lots of body roll. Things didn't start improving until I stiffened up the springs, got new shocks and lowered the car 2" in the back and 3" in the front. Also adjusted the slop out of my steering gear and had an alignment done. Now I couldn't be happier with it. The ride is firm, maybe more than some people would like, but it's good to me. The way it rides and corners reminds me a lot of how my old WS6 Trans-Am felt. It feels stable and planted. I wouldn't really blame the spacers as the culprit for how your car's acting. If you think of them more as an extension of the wheel rather than an extension of the hub it kinda makes more sense to me. They're not doing anything but correcting the offset of the wheel. Assuming that correction is right, the spacer really can't cause any problems. I would think it's more about the tire. If you had different 17x8" wheels that didn't require correction, and you had the same tires, I think it would drive the same. Is your overall tire diameter the same on the 15's? If you're using the OE Mustang tires like I did at first, (235/55/17) those are 27". Pretty tall for a Maverick. It raises the center of gravity, and that's why I initially lowered my car. Later on I went to a new size, 235/45, which are 25" in diameter and closer to what the car was designed for. Those made a difference. Tread width between your two sets of tires could be different too, but I think the biggest factor may be sidewall. There's less air cushion on the 17's, and a lot less sidewall movement. Mavericks and the Falcons they're based on were engineered for bias ply tires, which have a lot more lateral flex than radials. On a 15" tire with a lot of sidewall you still have some flex, but not so much with the low profile tires.[/QUOTE]
The scrub radius changes when you increase the diameter. The front suspension was engineered for 13" wheels, the line between the pivot point of the upper and lower balljoints is supposed to hit in the center of the tire, where it meets the pavement. When you put bigger wheels on, that line intersects the tire further toward the outside, making the steering work harder. Hope that makes some kind of sense.
I think you mean 14"... I never seen a 13" on our cars. And do you mean by putting larger diam tires and wheels it increases caster?
Wernt 69s built with 13s? I haven't found one yet (to round out my 69 ford collection). No, caster dosnt change, but if you look at a pair of spindles, the top ball joint hole is farther from the brake mounting flange than the bottom. If you stick a rod through both balljoint holes on the spindle, and extend it down, that's the axis that the spindle, and tire, will pivot around. If you can picture that... havnt had my caffene yet.
