Your Experience with Spacers

If you used to run spacers to widen your track, and you don’t anymore, what changed your mind?

If you currently use them, what’s the good and bad?

I’m close to giving it a try and want to hear some first hand experience.

 

Bye bye bearings.

 

Even a small amount, like 1.5”?

 

I've put them on every truck for many, many years, never had a single
issue with them - other than dirt roads though, no off-roading so I can't
comment on that. Currently have 1.5" on and they've been issue free for
nearly 3 years.

 

My advice to listen to those that have run them. You'll get lots of negatives from people that haven't ran them. I personally ran 1.5" Bora spacers for about 20k miles, no issues at all.

 

I ran SpiderTrax on my 4Runner for about 6 years/100K miles with no issues. Pulled them off when I was prepping the Runner for sale and sold them to a forum member.

Ideally, you'd just get a proper set of rims to widen your track, but the spacers seem to be fine as a less expensive alternative. Just don't buy cheap spacers, go with SpiderTrax or something equivalent in fit and quality.

 

Im using them now, Spidertrax 1.25. Only about 1000 miles on them, no issues. You will be fine as long as they are hub-centric.

 

Quality spacers act no different than a wheel of equal offset.

Subpar spacers can give you issues.

You get what you pay for.

 

How would you describe a subpar spacer?

 

the washer kind vs the ones with lugs for starters

 

wheel bearing failure most common

 

Can easily replace wheel bearings on 2nd and 3rd gen.

 

its your money

 

Generic. No name brand. Not year/make/model specific. Not hubcentric. Low grade materials. Etc.

 

Wheel bearing failures are no more common than with aftermarket wheels that produce the same “poke”.

 

Op, if you are looking at spacers, it d look at spidertrax or boras.

Expensive but very high quality products.

 

i agree spacers /lifts /after market wheels are not recomended

 

Recomended for what and by who?

 

Running wheel spacers is no different than running an aftermarket wheel that pokes out further.

As said, wheel spacers are fine IF you follow a few guidelines.

1. Only buy quality, either Spidertrax or Bora
2. Install them properly with a torque wrench
3. Double check torque after the first 100 miles or so.
4. Check torque twice a year/every 6k miles or so.

If you follow these you'll be fine. I run 1.25" spidertrax spacers with 34s, and have been for maybe 5k miles so far. Put quite a few hard wheeling trips on them with no issue.

And since we all like pictures/proof






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGYspBmVqV8

 

I ran spacers on my 3rd gen 4runner for over 200K miles with 285/75/17s and didn't have a single issue. As long as they are from a quality manufacturer and installed correctly they're great.