jaybuni

Folks,

Need your help please.

Wanting to add spacers to the front and back of my S4 to bring the wheels slightly out to fill the fenders and get that aggressive look.

Currently have Boxster rims, 7Jx17 Front with 205 50 17 Falkens 452 and 9Jx17 Rear with 255 40 17 again with Falkens 452

Please can someone advise whats the maximum size spacers I can put on the back and the fronts without having to roll the fenders so that they don't rub.

Thanks in advance.

Regards


Sy.

FlyingDog

With Mille Miglia Cup 1s 9x17 rear (ET 52 I think) and 255/40-17 PS2 tires 15mm spacers required some hand pulling on the quarters.

For the fronts, I'd be more worried about the resulting offset being too low causing severe tramlining and other bad handling.

jaybuni

Thanks Matt!

However I am completely lost....

I am more confused now than I was before!

So whats the recommendation please?

Cheers bud

dr bob

Sy--

Don't add spacers to the fronts. The 55mm offset on those front wheels is already too small. Adding spacers will only make it worse. Consider instead that you should upgrade front tire size to 225, much more appropriate for the front engine car. Moving the wheels out on the front can cause steering geometry problems like tramlining as others mention. It also means the side of the car will be dirty a lot sooner.

Rears-- measure the space between the edge of the rear tire and the fender with your fingers. Measure your fingers, and subtract half an inch. Spacers are sold in mm thicknesses, so convert your fingers to mm, 13.1mm per finger. Or multiply inches by 25.4 and get mm's. Remember to allow for clearance at the full-compressed position. With similar-size wheels and tires on the rear of my S4, I could safely add a 17mm bolt-on spacer with the car set at factory ride height.

Kolbjorn S

Ditto. I had these wheels before (<--) and even without spacers the car handled badly - very unstable. With spacers that should be exaggerated.

morganabowen

Dr. Bob is correct. Porsche built the 928 with 225s in the front. Like Bob says, up grade those front tires to 225s, and you will discover that you have a better ride, and it will reduce the oversteer. I did not like having the spacers on my S-4, the car just never drove right. As soon as I got rid of the spacers, the ride was 100% imporved. If you want to fill in the rear wheel wells, do like I did and go to a 285 rear tire. Good luck

dr bob

I'm pretty sure Larry meant to remind us that the wider fronts will help with the understeer.

Rear spacers are intended to adjust for wider wheels that have the wrong offset. They seem to make the car handle better with the wider track, but at the same time they reduce the effective spriong rates and soften the effects of the shocks. Moving the wheel out effectively lengthens the moment arm. OTOH, the wheelwells can look a little empty when compared with some newer cars. My car parked next to Larry's looks like it has skinnies inside dark tunnels where the wheels are. Point to all this is that just adding spacers will likely result in some unforseen issues. Now that you forsee them, maybe that's better. Lots of folks use rear spacers and rave about them. Some of the cars came with them from the factory so there's a tacit blessing for their use. So, use the fingers trick, looking for --horizontal-- clearance between the side of the tire and the fender. You'll need a little clearance to account for bushing distortion during hard cornering, but that isn't really much on the outside.

jaybuni

I measured the clearance on the rear wheels between the tyre wall and inside of the fender using a card board (couldn't use the finger technique as hand in plaster!). The conclusion is that there seems to be 20mm gap at the rear (fair approx.).

Does this mean I can put an 18mm or even a 20mm spacer?

Thanks to all

dr bob

Sy, you'll want to keep some clearance there to allow for suspension movement. I propose 13mm or so of clearance just to make sure the tires don't rub on turns when the rubber bushings in the suspension are stressed differently. If you are serious about getting everything you can in width, consider a little experiment. Clean the inside face of the wheelhouse where the tire will be closest. Make a patch of child's modeling clay from a toy store, and stick it on there. Make it maybe an inch thick to start. Go drive the car hard around a few corners and freeway ramps at speed. Inspect the clay and see if there's evidence of the tire rubbing the clay. If so, you can use almost anything to poke through the clay and see how close the tire is running to the inner face of the fender. That will give you an idea how much romm you have for spacers without rubbing.

Louie928

Be sure to check that your rear wheel camber is set correctly before deciding on a spacer dimension. Camber setting can make quite a change in tire to fender clearance.

jaybuni

Thanks guys you're the best!