spacers? I have a 1981 Mini that I want to
run with my 80 series 16" stock alloys with
35" tires. The 15" wheels that I'm running
now on the Mini barely clear the tie rod
ends. I've set the 80 wheels on the Mini's
hubs just for fitment and with the offset dif-
ference, wheel spacers are necessary. I'm
aware of the extra load on the wheel bear-
ings and read some posts where wheel
spacers have come loose. I'm just interested
in experienced opinion. The truck is mainly
used for trails, not as a daily driver.
`em; some hate `em. I've run spacers of
some sort ever since I bought my 1985
4Runner. I've used 1/4" spacers to clear
my wheel balancers: http://www.4crawler.
com/4x4/CheapTricks/WheelBalance/
index.shtml#Installation.
studs and I've also run 1-1/2" bolt-on wheel
adapters that have 6 separate studs for
attaching the wheel. With those, you have
twice as many nuts to keep tight. There are
the 6 original studs and nuts that hold the
adapter to the hub. Then you have the 6
studs and nuts in the adapter that hold the
wheel to the adapter. Those are probably
the ones folks have reported loosening since
you tend to forget about those inner nuts and
there is no way to check them unless you
remove the wheel. So you do need to take
the extra time to periodically remove each
then put the wheel back on.
on mine. I use anti-seize on all my wheel
studs and have never had one loosen up.
There is really no difference on wheel bear-
ing load comparing a spacer to running a
wheel with that much less backspacing. That
is, if you had a wheel with 1" less back-
spacing or you ran the existing wheel with
a 1" spacer, you get the same loading on
the wheel bearing. There is more loading
on the hub studs with the slide on spacers.
The adapters with their own studs would not
have that issue but then you have twice the
number of nuts to check.
spacers with the separate lug studs. They
are the aluminum Out Post Off-Road 1.5"
stud-centric available on Metal-tech's website
for the solid axle application. I wanted the
1" but their excellent tech support warned
me I might have to trim the original lug studs
length. Didn't want to do that. I'll try and cal-
culate the difference if any in backspacing
with my setup.