rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about why not to use wheel spacers on
your car, now lately quite a few people have been asking me, Scotty is it
alright if I'm gonna get bigger wheels to put wheel spacers in my car and some
guys say, hey I'm gonna get a wider traction so I want to put wheel spacers
so my tires are out further, well it's not a good idea and here's why
using spaces is basically just a rig, you get the spacers they go over the hub and
bolts on over that, it's just a cheap way to get bigger rims to fit on a car or to
make your wheels go out further, these are really cheap ones here
they make ones that actually have in sets, where they bolt to your hub and
then they have new studs sticking out that the wheel goes on, but they all do
the same thing, they push the wheel out further, it's basically a cheap way of
modifying the suspension system on your car, guys do it because maybe they got a
wheel that doesn't fit right, so they'll put spacers to make it fit or
they want to have their tires out further, so that it handles differently
or has more acceleration with bigger tires, but it's just kind of a cheap way
of ringing things and it's not a smart idea, in that sense it's just like the
video I made a while back about why not to change the muffler on your car to
one that makes more noise, the engineers have designed these things, they spent
decades perfecting suspension systems, they created them so the tire rides
perfectly and will wear evenly but still can corner are really well and
accelerate in corners without skipping, and guess what, when your tire is bolted
onto the stock hub, all that geometry is correct, from the angles of the top to
the bottom, to where the tread contacts the road, this was all carefully designed
so if you get a spacer and stick it on here, it's gonna make the wheel sit out
further and the theory is, a wider track you're gonna get better grip, but really
from what I've read from the engineers, the most you're going to get better
doing that is one two maybe two, which isn't much and since doing this
moves the tire out further, that changes the entire geometry of the suspension
system, which often leads to more tire wear, it can make your steering effort
harder, it can make your steering somewhat unresponsive under harsh
braking because of the change in this geometry, and lets face it, if you modified
your car to go faster, the last thing you want is unresponsive steering when
you're braking hard, and because it's changed the way that the tire sits, it
also can wear your wheel bearings out faster, they're loaded differently and
they weren't designed for that load they were designed for a load that was closer
to the center of the wheel bearing, so the wheel bearings can wear out faster
now you have to use your head when it comes to trying to modify your car, come
on, these engineers have been designing these things and they started with basic
wagon technology in the stagecoach days and got into the sophisticated cars that
can break handle and be a nice ride, you start modifying it by sticking your
wheels out further, hey it's just a dumb idea really, now big wide tires are
fantastic for drag strips, because you want the most contact you can, to get all that
power to the ground, so that it takes off and doesn't just sit there spinning
skinnier wheels, but hey we don't drive quarter mile races, we drive all
over the place in our cars and you're gonna ruin all other aspects of it just
to get one thing of, going in a straight line a quarter of a mile faster, now I do
admit that spaces are better made than they used to be, these are the cheap ones, the
actual expensive ones look like this, they are quality made, they bolt on and
then they got their own studs and nuts to hold your wheel in, it's not like
they're gonna fall off if you put them on correctly, because again decades ago when
I was a young mechanic, some of these kids I actually saw the wheels fly off
because they were just using cheap ones and not bolting them on right or they were
so thick that there wasn't enough for the nut to go onto the stud
so it wasn't holding it much and they would just fly off when they took off
fast, that's not a problem with modern vehicles with these well-made hub
centric really quality products, but still it's
ruining the original design of the vehicle, and sure guys are always gonna
do those kind of mods on jeeps and stuff especially ones that they take off-road
I mean if you've ever been in a Jeep, they ride like crap anyway if you're
gonna put these giant wheels and you're going rock crawling, it's a specialist vehicle
that you're having fun with, it's not something that you drive every day on
the road, because if you do all the fillings in your teeth are gonna fall
out, so now you know the truth about wheel spacers and why you should really
stay away from them, unless you're going to the drag strip or rock crawling, so if
you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that Bell!