Wheel Spacers and Adapters

Wheel spacers move the wheel outboard from the hub. People use them for two legitimate reasons: to correct an offset that tucks the wheel too far under the fender, and to gain clearance between the wheel and a big brake kit, suspension component or lift-kit control arm. They are also used purely for stance, which is fine as long as the parts are right.Quality is not optional here, because a spacer inserts itself into the load path between your hub and your wheel. Buy hub centric billet aluminum spacers that locate on your hub with a machined bore and provide a new hub lip for the wheel to center on. Avoid thin universal slip-on spacers with no hub register, which force the wheel to be centered by the lug hardware alone. Anything 1 inch or thicker should be a bolt-on style spacer with its own pressed studs.Adapters do a different job: they change the bolt pattern, letting you run a wheel with a pattern your vehicle does not have. Because adapters are necessarily thick, they always come as bolt-on units with their own studs.Two things to check after installing spacers: that your studs still have full thread engagement into the nut, and that the wider track has not put the tire into the fender at full steering lock and full suspension compression.