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RE: Ask the Car Guy @socky Mar 10, 2019

in #life6 years ago

Thank you for using my blog. You really ask the tough questions :-) No worries, I'm just glad that someone finds my blog useful.

The video doesn't mention one important issue the spacers create.
This is something that I deal with on off-road cars and trucks. The vehicle from the factory with factory wheels and tires is designed to have steering that pivots at the center of the tire or as close as possible. When wheels are changed with offset or spacers are used, this changes where this pivot point is. The tires will then move around the pivot point instead of pivoting at the center of the tire. This causes the entire front of your car to move left or right when turning the car. The result is the car will have stability problems. One way to correct this is to use narrower wheels and tires with offset towards the inside. The other alternative is to just drive a car that is difficult to handle.

I know that you can't possibly keep your vehicle factory. Don't worry, I can't either. I recommend just cutting out a tire size plywood blank to mimic the tire and bolt it in place of the wheel. Attach blocks of wood on the inside of the plywood at one spot to mimic the tire. Bolt that on and spin it to see where the tire could possibly hit. Change the thickness of the wood blocks to see what the offset should be and compare the result to the actual tire/wheel.

I don't know what the breaking is caused by. One tire will turn at a different angle than the other by design. That may have increased with modifications and be much more exaggerated than factory.

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Plywood blank... genius... thank you very much!