To buy or not to buy wheel spacers and why

Pic from the front showing stance?

 

None that I can find right now. I have to look and report back.

 

Spacers do NOT change steering geometry. No need for New alignment. Period.

Alignment is changed by adjusting caster, camber and toe. Spacers effect track width ONLY. No effect at all to caster camber or toe.

If alignment is ok BEFORE spacers, it will remain ok after spacers.

 

spacers and shocks in no way change the alignment...

 

Careful with this one, in practice I would agree, but in theory moving the weight of the wheel father out from the install point could place more down force on the control arms causing your camber to be affected. Think of it like moving a weight down a pole and trying to hold it, farther away, more force required to hold it up.

Like I said, I can't see the affect of a 1" or so spacer causing alignment spec issues, but the theory is there.

 

Yes, and that is what I am saying, when you change where the weight is distributed, it may be enough to effect change. I would rather be sure, have it looked at, then negatively effect my tire wear.

 

Spacers do NOT change alignment...BTDT. Interesting theories, but without merit.

 

What I said was only theory. My experience was no affect on alignment. I installed mine 4+ years ago when a new set of tires was installed, never re-aligned afterwards, ran the tires through their entire life with no affect on wear and no alignment done during that time, now on my second set of tires, with no affects as yet and still not aligned in that entire time.

Anyway, just my experience vs. my theory.

 

I was going to put Spidertrax spacers on after my 3 inch lift and 285/70/17 Falken Wildpeaks but man, my wheels poke out like 2 inches more just from the 285's

If you aren't going with 33's then the spacers are cool though

 

Any rub issues going that big? I was rubbing on 265/70R17s, but a heat gun and 2" lift later, am fine.

 

No man not at all! Was really surprised after reading all the info on this forum for months. I got full 3 inches of lift up front and didn't have to do any trimming. Only removed the front mud flaps. If I am in full lock and coming out of the driveway or something it might rub a bit when I come off the curb but otherwise no rubbing.

 

This is simply wrong. Literally nothing changes that can affect your alignment. Think of it this way, you have a linked UCA and LCA tied together by your wheel hub and dampened by a coilover, steered by a tie rod. None of that adjustability includes the end of the hub. Put simply: Even if your weight is further out on the hub with a spacer, the GEOMETRY of the suspension is not changed. Adding spacers will never affect your alignment directly,

However, the effective rate of your springs may feel *slightly* higher, which is the effect you're thinking of. Either way, this has no effect on your suspension at rest, as the weight of the truck is static, so again, the alignment is not affected by spacers.

 

Damn, not quite sure how some of you get so damned lucky. Haha

 

Adding spacers:
- Widens your truck's track
- Increased scrub radius
- Slightly increases effective spring rate when turning
- Adds a negligible amount of sprung weight with the weight of the spacers themselves

Each put simply:
Widened track -- Wider stance of the tires. This is good for trails to protect the body since the wheels stick out. Perhaps more importantly, it lowers rollover risk. As an aside, when you lift the Taco, the geometry of the suspension changes, resulting in the wheels being more tucked into the wheel wheels up front. This isn't a profound effect, but does further increase rollover risk from lifting, which is restored to roughly factory track with a small (1/2") spacer. I run a 1.25" spacer set for this reason alone.

Increased scrub radius -- The tire pivots farther from the hub's attachment point than stock. This is actually a bad thing, it makes steering more floaty and less responsive. You won't notice much with an inch or so... The main thing I noticed is hitting a bump at speed on one side. When this happens, the truck will turn more towards the bump than without the spacer. This means hitting potholes has more of an effect on handling than before.

Increased spring rate - THIS IS ONLY WHEN TURNING! With a wider track, the truck has more resistance to swaying.

Sprung weight - Ok, spacers weigh like a pound. It affects suspension dampening, and rolling weight, which has a negligible affect on mpg and braking. I thought about not including it, but I'm being verbose because this thread is an absolute cesspool of misinformation.


There's nothing wrong with using hub-centric spacers. Use loc-tite, and tighten them to spec. Check that they're still tight to spec after 500 miles, and each tire rotation.

 

Between all my vehicles that have had spacers on them, I've racked up over 400k miles and never had an issue in any of them. I am in my first set of aluminum spacers, so will see how these hold up but doubt any issues will arise. Good info in your post.

 

https://youtu.be/ceyPHrd3OXo

Lol

 

Def within spec

 

2nd gen guy here but I just installed spidertrax 1.25'' spacers a couple weeks ago to fit my 285's. I'm on a leveling kit and 4runner rims. The only reason why I added the spacers was because I was rubbing the uca. I did a lot of research because I always heard bad things about spacers and I didn't want to fork up the money for different rims since I like the 4runner rims. To my surprise, contrary to what most anti-spacer people say, I was hard pressed to find any issues with the hub-centric spacers. Now the normal plate spacers are bad and that's what gives spacers a bad rep. As long as you run hub centric ones like spidertrax, unless by install error, you won't have any issues from what I've seen. I've read hundreds of posts by people that run them for years and off road with them more than I do and never had an issue. Again, just my $.02 since I recently did a lot of research about it and was skeptical at first. That being said, once my 285's wear out i'll be getting 275's and hopefully won't need the spacers anymore, I did this more for a temporary fix till I need new tires next fall. They give the truck a good look too and no more rubbing the uca

 

Been considering getting a set of Spidertrax WHS-007 1.25" spacers for my 2018 Off Road simply because I like the look of the slightly wider stance (I'm currently running stock OR wheels and tires.) For those running the Spidertrax (or any other 1.25" hub-centric spacer):

• Have you noticed a significant increase in debris getting kicked up and damaging the body?
• Is there much change in the ride quality? Some other TW spacer threads seem to suggest the ride quality suffers as the suspension feels stiffer.

 

Suspension (spring rate) is not effected by spacers.