mdrums

OK, I searched the forum for my question and all I can find is some posted were people have put various sized wheel spacers on to help give the car a more agressive look.

So far nothing has been said about what wheel spacers do for the handling or ride of the car. Do spacers change the geometry of the suspensions to provide any good or bad handling traits for the car?

thanks, Mike

Coochas

With my regular wheels/tires I added the 5mm set - I noticed no change in handling, stability, or comfort. I basically wanted the wheels to fill out the wells a bit more.

I run 17mm on the rear with my snow rims/tires to equalize the front/rear tracks and to lessen the 'donut' look...either way, it doesn't handle great on that rubber!

mdrums

Coochas, thanks for the reply. My car will have the same Porsche wheels you have. I've heard that the 5mm spacers from Porsche really do not do much and was wondering abou the spacers others on this site have used.
I am wondering about adding weight to the suspension and how spacers would affect the car handling with the bigger spacers.

thanks...anyone else?
Mike

NiATE

I'm curious to see what the track guys have to add to this. There's nothing like true experience. You might throw it on the 996TT forum. I bet you'll get some feedback there. Different cars, but similar enough I think...

mdrums

NiATE, that is exactly what I was wondering...what do the track guys think?

Jim Michaels

I think most trackers would probably prefer to avoid spacers, but they're sometimes used as corrective devices for wheels with incorrect offsets. The preference seems to be to just have wide wheels and tires with the proper offsets so spacers are not needed. On the other hand, I've seen some monster spacers on a few race cars. Thin spacers (6 mm or so) won't improve handling noticeably, so their main usage is to move narrow wheels and tires out for appearance, or to correct wheels with incorrect offsets.

ronmart

I know Ray G has a lot of seat time on the track in a wide variety of cars and he seemed to enjoy his 5mm spacers on his 997 C2s with X51. It was purely asthetic though from what I recall.