Need Tech help! -- 5mm Spacers causing wheel misalignment
 

Greetings folks,

I was at the shop yesterday installing some hub centric 5mm Spacers with Extended Studs (Ichiba to be exact). Installation was rather seamless but after taking my car for a ride I noticed the Rear Driver side Wheel wobbling through my driver side mirror. Frantically shaken I drove back to the shop cautiously.

Car is up on hoist with driver to simulate wheel movement and in fact it is wobbly. Note only the Driver side, passenger side rear is perfectly fine.

So here are the things we tried in order to find the common element that was causing the problem:

1. Swapped Wheels, passenger side to driver side. Issue was still persistent. Rule out a wheel issue.

2. Swapped Spacer from passenger side to driver side. Tested both wheels and issue was still persistent. Rule out Spacer issue

3. Removed spacer on Driver side. Issue went away, tire completely aligned now.

The only common element left are the extended studs and lug nuts and that would completely make no logical sense to be causing the wobble, my only rationale would it in fact cause wobble if the studs are faulty and when the wheel is mounted on a particular thread it triggers this offsetting ?


I am now stuck with extended studs and no spacers that probably wont fit on my stock rims + lugs. I am now dabating weather to try replace the studs and try again with spacer or just put stock studs back on.

:mad::mad::mad:

I'd abandon the eibach and purchase a set of H&R... Might be the spacer itself causing your issue. :tup:

I'd add Ichiba wheel spacers to that as well. Twice I've bought them and twice I've had a shimmy at about 130 km/h. No good.

Sorry guys I typo'd.. They are Ichiba spacers.

Thing is the right side was ok and i used that Spacer on the Driver side and still experienced the issue. We also tried using a no name brand and still had this wobble.

Any ideas?

Studs probably are bent or not seated properly

That's exactly what I thought! The tech's told me there is no way that could happen otherwise the rim would not fit into the studs properly.

Wanna bet

So their response was

"
Studs get pressed in using a bearing tool that sit flush against the hub. Even if I tried to put them in crooked its not possible.. If studs are crooked or bent the lug wouldn't go on.
"

Well it's not the wheel/tire (unless they rotated and didn't balance it) so it's gotta be the spacer or the studs

These stock wheels or aftermarket?

Since you're installing a relatively thin (5 mm) hub-centric spacer, it may be that it is not sitting flush since the hub extends too far. I know that I installed a set of 10 mm H&R hub-centric spacers and had to grind about a millimeter off the rear hubs in order for the spacers to fit flush. The instructions that came with the spacers warned that the hub could not extend beyond a certain number of millimeters; otherwise the spacer would not fit properly. This might also apply in the case of your spacers.

Have you tried cleaning the hub face and the hub protrusion? Something is causing the spacer to not sit correctly.

40 you have a good point ... i will take this up with the techs today.

In fact we did take a wire brush sanding wheel and grind off any obscurities on the face of the hub but perhaps we need to remove the studs and give it a better sanding.