Has anyone used 1" bolt on wheels spacers to fit wider wheels for racing? I want to use a set of rims on my car but they too much backspacing they look like they'll fit with the wheel spacers. I'm wondering if it'll be safe to race with the spacers and drag radial. I have the spacers and rims already so I'd like to use them if safe.
i wouldn't recommend it to much can go wrong with spacers like coming loose or enough slop to wear and break studs.
i believe that nhra doesnt allow them. i have seen lots of car with them at the track. i see them used allot on the sn95 mustangs. ive never seen any damage caused by them. ive seen them on lots of cars that ive worked. so in the end i wont say to use them, im just offering my experience with them.
I believe Bryant is correct. Probably depends on the tracks persistance in keeping you and everyone else safe as you start to go quicker and faster. And I too can say from experience that you usually see tons of them on fairly fast cars... street or otherwise. But.. they're usually installed on lower budget builds and you won't see them too often on full-tilt 150mph rides. I"ve also run them on many of my 12 second cars with decent top ends over 135.. and been along for the ride in even faster ones. Trick is to get good quality billet type spacers that can take the extra abuse if you do go that route and keep your thickness within reason. I usually use 1/2 inch at the most. Also from a handling standpoint, 1" may not seem like much.. but when you move a wheel and tire package weighing 55 lbs outwards of the brake hub by that much or more.. the forces imposed on the entire suspension can increase substantially. Shocks seem to hate that too. Of course it really takes several inches of outward wheel/tire movement to get real worried about that sort of thing. Just another downside to add to the debate, is all. I myself tend to use them more as an asthetic fine tuning aid for looks.. than I do for a wheel fitment band-aid since they add variable to the whole picture and in the end.. you have to take the bad with the good. In your case.. maybe it would be ok for a shorter lived band-aid option since it's not a 10 second car.. but good billet spacers(100 bucks last time I bought them) and decent longer studs(x 10).. along with the time to convert things over.. probably won't be the way to go IMHO. That's cash you could be using towards getting the correct backspacing you need in the first place. Solid one piece wheel hub.. no cracking.. no balancing issues.. no mod's required.
I've run them on my car for five years in all conditions, no problems. Good ones are as strong or stronger than the wheel itself, and completely safe long as it's properly installed. This is true if the combination of the wheel and spacer ends up too far out, same as if you do it without a spacer and just use a wheel of the wrong offset. If the spacer puts the wheel and tire in the proper position, this isn't a problem. We think of these spacers as extensions of the hub, but they're really more like extensions of the wheel.
not when they're not welded on.. they aren't. If the spacer is welded dead center onto the wheel and the wheel gets rebalanced.. then you have a 1 piece center hub on the wheel. Same same.. although slightly weaker I would assume. Otherwise, it's simply another variable added into the equation and I have cracked them on a few of my 4x4 trucks through the years. The expansion and contraction variations caused by excessive brake heat and big tires was surely the cause.. but who really wants shrapnel slowly crumbling away between the wheels mounting flange and hub. 1 literally fell out when I pulled the wheel. That's what you get for 20 bucks though.. and I wasn't surpised at all since they were only 1/2 inch thick. Maybe 1 inch spacers would have survived longer. IMHO, the cheaper cast "universal" ones are junk on high speed cars as they look to be weaker with all the holes drilled in them.. plus they tend slop around during installation and cause slight imbalances. Like I said earlier.. for racing.. go billet.. or go home.
I'm pretty sure the ones I have (in picture) are billit, they don't look they're cast. And they are not universal they have a 5x4.5 bolt pattern, they came off of a jeep wrangler with 33's on them.
That looks like the same thing I've got. I wouldn't be afraid to run them, not after the abuse I've put mine through.
I tried to look in the 2012 NHRA guide and couldn't really find anything about spacers. From personal experience they have allowed the non-eccentric (universal) type. If you remember back in 2008 there was a Funny Car that lost its wheel because of the wheel spacer being installed incorrectly ..........and since then NHRA has been pretty picky. Make sure you use grade 8 or better extended lugs so they are at least 1/2" past the open nut.................IMHO
