Are wheel spacers SAFE??

[fourwd1]

Moving this from 5th Gen section to General Discussion section so others can maybe learn something from this.

 

[83Mule]

sent the Wife to America's Tire with a note saying put 80 lbs on the lugs...........they balanced all 4 and I pulled out the Torque wrench when She got home, 110 lbs! I backed them off and did them to 80. If they overdo it you get broken studs, DON'T trust them!

 

[TK-422]

sent the Wife to America's Tire with a note saying put 80 lbs on the lugs...........they balanced all 4 and I pulled out the Torque wrench when She got home, 110 lbs! I backed them off and did them to 80. If they overdo it you get broken studs, DON'T trust them!

If you ask them to hand torque the wheels they will. At least they have for me. I watched them grab a torque wrench.

 

[TK-422]

Wouldn’t the stock studs stick out above the one inch spacer? If so, did your rims have recesses to accommodate that? Reason for asking is that I have seen a failure similar to this if the rim doesn’t sit absolutely flush on the spacer. I know that this guys studs were only a few thousandths of an inch too long.

If you look at the second picture you can see the end of the original wheel studs sit beneath the outer edge of the spacer.

 

[TK-422]

I used an old trick to get the caliper piston back in place. A 5" c-clamp and a piece of scrap steel. This just took a couple minutes including stopping to snap a pic. I did remove the cap on the master cylinder tank first.

I then pulled the other three spacers and it's done.

I know a lot of others have spacers and they usually fail when new or tires have been recently changed. In my case there was no recent activity to cause this making it much more dangerous.

 

[83Mule]

If you ask them to hand torque the wheels they will. At least they have for me. I watched them grab a torque wrench.

That is what my note said.....''Torque to 80 pounds, all wheels''.....So even with the Wife telling them, and a note given to them they DIDN'T! Stretched studs due to Gorilla wrenches is likely the cause of most stud failures.