4 Runner TRD Pro Wheel w/ wheel spacer RUBS on Tacoma

nonametacoman · Apr 26, 2020

Just wanted to share the results from a small experiment I conducted yesterday in hopes this helps anyone who is considering this specific wheel, tire, and spacer set up on their 3rd gen Tacoma.

My truck is a 2017 DCSB Tacoma TRD OR. Stock suspension, stock wheels, stock tires, 1.25" Spidertrax wheel spacer.

My girlfriend has a 2018 4Runner TRD Pro, which comes with 17x7 TRD Pro wheels equipped with 265 70 17 Nitto Terra Grapplers.

I have always been envious of her wheels and tires so I decided to steal the driver front wheel and see how it looks and functions on the Tacoma with my 1.25" wheel spacer.

See below pictures and descriptions.

PICTURE 1:
Stock

PICTURES 2-6:
With the wheel / tire installed. Love the look, appears much more aggressive than stock.

PICTURE 7:
On to the rubbing issues. This picture is of the tuck on level ground, the front driver wheel is turned approximately 80% to the left, which seems to be the position where the tire is closest to the cab mount. As you can see the tire rubs on a small piece of the plastic wheel well liner near the cab mount (not a big deal). More importantly there is only a very small gap between the cab mount and the tire (I did not measure but would estimate approximately 1/4" gap between the tire and the cab mount)

PICTURES 8-9:
Next, I backed the front driver side tire onto a 4x4 piece of scrap wood as a quick way to simulate a small amount of flex or going over uneven terrain. I kept the wheel turned approximately 80% to the left and as you can see the tire is now even closer to touching the cab mount. Again, I did not measure but would estimate the gap to be about the size of a sheet of paper. I am by no means an expert of very knowledgeable on this topic but would strongly suspect that if this setup was taken off road there could be rubbing issues with the tire and the cab mount.

In conclusion, I suspect that the rubbing issue would be mitigated with the removal of the wheel spacers. In order for this setup to function as is, I would need to cut or reform the wheel well plastic which I do not think would not be a big deal. My biggest concern would be how close the tire gets to the cab mount. That leads me to believe there would be a likely need to do a cab mount chop to have full off road functionality, but I cannot confirm that.

Hope this helps you out if you were considering this specific setup.