school me on wheels and wheel spacers

Wheel spacers are bad. Period. I've seen one fail on a Ranger on the interstate. Trashed the right front corner of the truck. As for the backspacing I'm not going to make a wrong input for you.

i have read that MM is a good and reputable company to deal with, so if wheel spacers were that bad why would MM sell them?

is it really wheel spacers or lug bolts that’s the problem.
most ppl who say the lugs broke not the spacer.

if you want look here
http://www.maximummotorsports.com/

http://www.wheeladapter.com/home.asp

you can search google for info on backspacing and offset.

I know backspacing is the distance from where the wheel mounts in the rear straight up to where the edge of the wheel is. If you stuck a ruler end on the back side of the wheel that mounts to the hub and held it straight, you'd look down the back side of the wheel and see 6.11" on wheel #1 and 5.95" on wheel #2.

What this means is that wheel #1 would have more wheel toward the inner fender/quad shock and less space toward the outside/fender.

Wheel #2 would have less wheel behind and more in front.

I will say that with both, unless you remove your quad shocks, you may have issues there. Some people are able to flip them and that works for some.

I've never read enough or had to deal with offset enough to understand it.

I decided to remove my quad shocks, rather than use spacers.

As the other guy said, spacers put extra strain on the lugs.

I don't know if hub-centric spacers really help, either. Even with hub-centric spacers, I believe that most of the car's weight still rests on the lugs. It's an ongoing debate, but most authoritative sources I've read, say that most of a car's weight rests on the lugs, not on the hubs. One way think about it: How tight are the hubs, and how tight are the lugs nuts when fully tightened? The lug nuts are much tighter than the hubs, therefore I think that most of the car's weight rests on the lug nuts, and therefore on the lugs.

I'm running 15x8 rims, with 275/50/15 Nitto drag radials. The big tires wouldn't fit with the quad shocks, so I removed the quad shocks. I also used a hammer to pound in the lower lip of my inner fender wells, just for a little extra room.

Just driving around town, I don't notice any major problems, with the missing quad shocks. I'm going to get aftermarket control arms and bushings, to minimize the possibility of wheel hop, and to tighten up the suspension.

Anyway, my 15x8 rims have 5.5 inch backspacing. Backspacing is the distance between the axle-wheel interface and the back of the wheel (the part of the wheel closest to the car). The larger the backspacing, the further inward the wheel will be.

However, there's a big difference between 15 inch rims with big fat tires, and 17 inch rims. The 17 inch rims have more clearance toward the center, because of the larger radius.

And, of course, it depends on how wide the tires are. And the brand of tires. Nittos run narrow, and BFG run wide, or so I've heard. It also may even depend on the rim brand, or maybe not. I'm not sure about that.

If you have too much backspacing, the wheels will hit your inner fender wells, and of course the quad shocks, if you keep your quad shocks. If you have too little backspacing, the wheels may rub on the upper outer lip of the fenders, when your wheels hit a bump, or when you turn onto a steep driveway (in other words, whenever the wheel is deflected upward for any reason).

Spacers are a "crutch" for improper backspacing, in my opinion.

You should do lots of searches.

I'm not really sure what the best backspacing is, for 17x9 rims, but I'm sure there are lots of posts on that subject.

My guesstimate would be the 5.95 inch backspacing, so that maybe you won't have to remove your quad shocks, but that's only a wild guess.

Again, I would avoid spacers at all costs.

More info: Do a keyword search on these 2 words: 17x9 backspacing

Be sure to only search the "5.0 Mustang" forum.

Here's one thread I found:

http://forums.stangnet.com/showthread.php?t=493567&highlight=17x9+backspacing

They recommended the 5.95 inch backspacing.

Mustang5L5 said:

But it's the spacer that puts the extra forces on the lugs causing them to break.


MM does make quality spacers. They are hubcentric so all the load is placed on the hubs and not the lugs. Downside is this style is expensive.

The really bad spacers are the cheap ones you see at pep boys or autozone. It's scary that people put these things on their car.

I don't like spacers at all, but if you are going to run them, get the MM spacers AND upgrade to hardened lugs

Click to expand...

so what you are saying is you get what you pay for.

Look up underpressuregt and wheelspacers and youll get your answer on spacers..

The difference between a 5.95 and 6.11 is about 1/8" not enough to make any difference either way. Wheel spacers are a band aid fix, period. And since no ine as explaind offset vs. backspacing, I will. As mentioned earlier, backspacing is the distance from the mounting pad to the back of the wheel. Offset is the distance from the center of the wheel to the mounting surface. So wheel #1 is 26mm from the center of the wheel to the mounting surface. Since it is a positive offset, the mounting surface is in front of the center. A negative offset wheel the mounting surface is behind the center, these are usually found on trucks, and older rear drive cars. So my advice is this, forget the spacers and the skateboard wheel sticking out look, and buy whichever wheel you like better.

RsStanG1987 said:

Look up underpressuregt and wheelspacers and youll get your answer on spacers..

Click to expand...

Here's that thread:

http://forums.stangnet.com/showthread.php?t=585637

By the way, if I remember correctly, wheel spacers are usually not allowed at drag strips.

the wheels on the bus go round and round

Wheel spacers are bad. A 4 lug fox came into my dads old shop one time with a horrendous vibration and it turned out 3 lugs had fallen off the wheel, and the last one was loose. That was about to be ugly. Wheel spacers on a race car are different, they probably have their wheels taken off all the time so their constantly retightened. Spacers will make lugs come loose, period.

Wheel spacers are the devil!