Wheel Spacers are a cost effective and easy way to get your fitment set up just how you like it. Some people love spacers, some people run them out of necessity, and some people think they are the literal devil and your entire axle will tear out of your car and cause a 30 car pile up around you. And I am here to tell you today that spacers are good,  spacers can even be great, but that’s not without some caveats. So you should read this blog before buying wheel spacers for your car.

So right off the bat I will tell you that spacers are like a bandaid in most cases. I’m gunna go out on a limb and say like 90% of people that use spacers probably effed up their fitment somewhere along the way. And honestly, I get it, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Here’s what we’ll do, let’s walk through a couple different things so you can get all the facts about spacers. I’ll talk about if they’re safe or not (cause that is probably people’s number one concern), are they even worth it?What kind should you buy?, and other little quirky things about spacers.

So first, are they safe?

Depends.

In general the answer is yes. A conservative 1 millimeter to 5ish millimeter spacer should be fine to run especially if installed correctly. However, this is not something you want to cheap out on. Amazon spacers may look tempting. I mean $20 bucks to get your fitment dialed sounds great until that chinesium literally splits in half cause you took too hard of a right turn. 

You need to buy real spacers from real reputable brands. Some of those include

H&R

BORA

APR

RENNLINE

NOVITEC

Those doomsday never spacers people do have a point in their fear of the wheel shooting off of your car because the spacer will break. Obviously they’re a little over the top, but if you are buying those cheap spacers, especially if you get some fat like 17mm ones that arent hubcentric, you need to be careful. Along with the fear of breaking, a cheap material spacer also has the potential to friction weld itself to the assembly or warp badly and start popping your lug of the wheel, while also destroying the wheel.  The warping can also cause problems and if there’s an improper balance. Your tires will get messed up, your wheel rotation will get messed up and next thing you know, you’re 3 lanes over side swiping the median all because you thought Aliexpress was the smart move. I’m sorry to keep sounding like one of those people that think spacers are evil, but I cannot stress enough how important quality spacers are for your safety. You’ll also need to watch out for the quality of the studs. Those things snapping off while driving can absolutely be detrimental to… your life.All of that can be mitigated though, by just getting the right spacers. I cannot stress it enough, do not cheap out with spacers.

Real spacers, quality spacers will, the spacers that you should be buying will usually use some sort of high grade T6061 aluminum, with heavy duty studs. And speaking of studs, another very common issue when it comes to the safety or lack of safety surrounding spacers is when the studs don’t get torqued enough. You can buy sets of spacers either with or without studs attached to the unit. If you are buying a spacer that has the studs separate, you should almost overdo it when it comes to torquing those bad boys down. You’re going to want to get around 6 and a half to 8 rotations out of them to make sure they are safe. If you’re having trouble with that, you might want to consider getting spacers that come with lug studs as a part of the spacer. The worst thing that can happen is all the vibration from garbage roads loosens up those studs and then you see your new wheel 100 feet in front of you while cruising down the highway. 

Something to also consider when buying spacers with a separate lug studs is low long the studs are. If you get a 5mm spacer, and the lug stud are 6 or 7 millimeters you’re going to have them poking out and potentially pressing in the the back of your wheel. That will result in a brand new gap and your wheels not being seated properly which again, can make them go POP, or at the minimum, you’ll have imbalance problems and that will just lead to more issues. 

Now it’s rare with smaller spacers for that to happen, but if you start getting in to fatter spacers like 25 milimeters or more, you might have to grind down those studs so your squated truck doesnt fall apart. I’m looking at you florida and texas people.

Another thing that you need to get when looking for spacers is a hub centric ring. That will make it easier for you to get the wheel on, plus it will keep the wheel in place and cancel out vibration. And if your lug studs are too big, your wheel wont be able to line up the the hubcentric ring, and again. problemThe final safety thing i’ll talk about is the sizing. The bigger spacer you get, the more you need to worry about load bearing problems. The worst thing you can do is run like 3 25 millimeters spacers and have those things bend like a banana. Obviously that’s only what insane people would do, but regardless, you should weight your options if running a massive spacer is worth it, compared to just getting the correct fitment for your wheels.

So after all that doom and gloom, lets lighten it up a little.

Are wheel spacers worth it? 

YES!

Like i mentioned earlier, 90% of spacer usage is because of fitment issues. This can be anything from getting used wheels on facebook marketplace, or you just underestimate the offset of the wheels you just bought, or you got a set of multi piece wheels and everything about it was finicky. Spacers are a great way to fix your fitment to make sure you get exactly what you want. I dont know of anyone that would drop a couple thousand dollars on wheels and be like “Oh no, my offset is off by 1mm, let me go buy another set.” if you have money like that, then be my guest.  And who knows maybe you want to switch up your fitment style. Maybe your car has a tucked fitment and one day you’re laying in bed, scrolling on our instagram feed and you see a car with unreal poke and you think to yourself “I NEED TO BE THAT”. Spacers will be perfect for you to switch it up and switch back. Another cool thing you can use spacers for is an adapter. Lets say you have a typical 5×114.3 and you find the perfect set of wheels that you love and you need, but they only make them in a 5×112. Or a 4 lug. Wheel spacers can basically be a fix all for that. I would probably recommend just getting the right lug pattern, but hey, this is a free country, you do what you want. I’m just a guy. Spacers are not a requirement for your car. They are definitely more in the want category, or the ‘oops i goofed” category. But if you are wanting spacers, we have a ton of options and a ton of brands. I mentioned a couple earlier like H&R, APR, and Bora and those will all be amazing quality like i talked about. If you want to pick up a set, there’s links all over this page. Shopping for spacers and getting the right thing can be tough, so if you need someone to talk to and walk you through it, we have a ton of performance specialists that know a long more about cars than I do.

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