Spacers: advantages and disadvantages

I love the look of tires sitting slightly wider than the wheel well. I'm considering getting some spacers to achieve this look, but are there disadvantages? Is the only real positive an aesthetic one? Thanks for your help.

 

More parts of (usually) questionable quality to fail. No thanks.

 

I'm thinking that if that was a good idea, Toyota would have built it that way. It wouldn't cost them anything to manufacture Tacos like that.

 

Well Toyota thought the silver grilles were a good idea too...

 

Spacers that you would get from All-Pro or Bora or similar are machined from high quality aluminum. The threads are just as strong as the OEM hub ones. The problem lies in the extension of the load bearing axis outward. The hubs are designed (and were tested) to have the wheels where they are placed from the factory. When the wheel is mounted on an extended axis (outwards), you are creating a larger moment against that hub, exacerbating the torsional load seen by the hub and the ball joint, etc.

Is it enough to fuck up your truck? No. But you'll be changing wheel hubs and ball joints marginally sooner than those without them. And you have a smaller factor of safety on the trails for part failure because of this.