Damage from 2" wheel spacers?

With the minor exception of a spacer presenting more possible points of failure (doubling up studs, etc).

 

i've never had this issue. and i've been running spidertrax wheel spacers for 3 years now. also, did a road trip from San Diego Ca, to Fairbanks Ak, with them and not one single issue. so theres that.

Edit:

I did that trip 3500 miles one way, and drove around for about 7k Miles in total, and then re-torqued. Then I drove back down to SF Ca again. Then back to Fairbanks Ak, so another 7k miles. so about 20K miles so far. I now have 62k miles all in all on spacers. I have been running spidertrax since 500 miles on the ODO.

 

ive got spidertrax 1.25 inch on my 2020, no issues. buy spidertrax or BORA, follow the torqing proceedures, recheck in 500miles and i bet you are good like the 99.999999% of us that have no issues.

 

Ah. Here come the reasonables.

 

these threads are always funny....do what you want, if it breaks, fix it.

50k on spidertrax spacers on this truck and over 100k on bora spacers on my old duramax, lots of towing and no issues.

 

This.

 

Unfortunately I probably have less time on my hands these days. I am a full time engineering student and a part time employee. Classes have all moved online and I'm needing to really keep on top of things.

Interesting situation here, the spacer itself has held up well enough, as have the factory wheel studs. My guess is that the lug nuts were probably overtightened or were of poor quality. I suspect the former, but the latter is also a possibility. Don't buy cheap spacers.

Depending on loading conditions, things will of course vary. When doing my comparison, I looked at and mentioned the static load case because it is representative of all variation with and without a spacer. Axial load does not change with a spacer and all forms of radial loading will experience the same increase as the static load case. Unloaded, the heaviest 2016-2020 Tacoma curb weight is 4,550lbs with 2,620lbs (57.6%) of that over the front wheels. GVWR will typically load more in the rear, so I would agree that 50/50 at 5,600lbs is probably reasonable.

Bearing life can be calculated in a couple of ways, that said for tapered roller bearings (which is what the Tacoma uses up front), basic L10 bearing life can be a bit more complicated than just load cubed. You need real radial and real axial load cases, and the exponential is 10/3 for tapered roller bearings. L10=(C/P)^(10/3), in our case C is constant (approx. 100kN for a tapered roller bearing of the size on the Tacoma) and P is potentially only affected by the increase in radial load. Note that the formula for P varies depending on the ratio of axial/radial load. If Fa/Fr <= e, P=Fr, but if Fa/Fr > e, P=0.4Fr+YFa. For a similar bearing (LM 508700), e=0.4, Y=1.5.

The wheel bearings on a vehicle have a complicated load case, with varying speed, radial and axial loads, so if we make the assumption that Fa/Fr is < e, we can use L10=(C/Fr)^(10/3).

Because the inner and outer bearings are the same size, we only need to look at the highest load case to determine bearing life, that is the outer bearing. In the stock setup, it will see 1,778lbs and with a 2" spacer it is 4,144lbs as stated (2.33x).

So the ratio of L10 bearing life is ((C/2.33Fr)/(C/Fr))^10/3 = 2.33^(-10/3) = 5.96%.

Again, it depends on the type of bearing and load cases, but if you plug those numbers in they do come out in around that range in this case:

1.2^(-10/3) ~= 1/2
1.5^(-10/3) ~= 1/4

From the bearing's perspective a spacer and a low offset wheel are exactly the same. A bolt-on spacer just adds more points of failure. For simple analysis like what we're doing here, we consider the distributed load on the tire to be a point load at the centre of the wheel. Moving the centre of the wheel out (using a spacer or by changing the offset) is equivalent.

Jeff

 

Like I said, spacers are fine if used properly. I've run them and will continue to do so.

If something wears out, fix it. If it keeps wearing out, fix the thing that's wearing it out.

Jeff

 

Now maybe we can finally squash this…

what say you @stun gun?




…at least until the 2021 buyers come rolling in

 

Mmmm yes. Until we meet again

 

WHOAH whoah wait nobody leave.

Does all of the above still apply to 2.5" spacers? We only covered 2" spacers.

 

You will die if you use 2.5"

 

Look at the dude's tire tread. Clearly don't give a