Wheel Spacers for improved handling??

[olliecast]

Ollie, I'm gueesing you mean 325 and 337, about a 12mm difference. Did you set this before or after the spacer was added. Also, did you add 20mm per side or 10mm per side? the post isn't clear.. or its just getting late for me.

yes mate sorry, 325 and 337.
put 20mm per side on the back. Doesn`t seem to rub with my 15`s though.

 

[olliecast]

heres my latest alignment.
i`m not into the +`ve camber on the back. They said they couldn`t do it and i`d have to go back and book more time (they only book 1/2 hour slots!!

i`m going to do it myself now. Just in the process of levelling mine up on the drive. got my string, plumb line and level

 

[campbellju]

Ollie, not enough camber front, Positive camber rear!

Toe is alright, you haven't done the caster mod?

Looking at the print out you wil be better starting again yourself.

I'm guessing you have no rear camber adjustment method? At the front, are the top mounts as far inbound as they go or is more available? If not then you will need to do my coarse camber mod. If you need to do the coarse camber mod then you may as well do the caster mod too.

Even if you don't do any of that, the original poor boy camber mod where you losen the stut off, get a jack underneath and apply a little pressure to force it more negative before tightening it up again will usually free up -0.3degs.

I started with a plub line and level on camber, it works and you can get quick at it but nowadays I would use a £40 digital inclinometer off Ebay, more accurate, faster and can be used directly on the hub so changes are much faster.

 

[olliecast]

i`ve actually got the whiteline camber bolts front and rear so i can alter it. The garage said they didn`t want to as it`d take too long.

like you say i`m going to start again, i was going to buy one of those magnetic camber gauges, but cash is tight so the plumb line`ll have to be used

 

[fubar andy]

I'm gussing the spacers were a function of what was needed to stop the things rubbing... too much :-D Did you fit the spacers before or after I last saw the car.

Just to get it clear in my mind, no spacers you got rubbing on the inside front and I don't think the back fit without spacers?. you fitted the 15mm's to the front and got rubbing on the outside? Dropped it back to 13mm? At the back, similar story but dropped it to 5mm?

Since we last met, I now have two sets of wheels, one set is the original ET35 wheels and the new set was ET42.
Fitting ET42’s has been tiresome to install which led me to use spacers. The 35’s have 225mm A048R’s and the 42’s have 205mm RS2’s.

With the right spacers (ET42’s front spacer 13mm and rear 5mm) it balanced the position of the wheels from the coilover strut to the wheel arch.
However with the ET35’s and running the 225’s those were almost touching the coilover (rear) to a point where I was uncomfortable about driving it anywhere (these had no spacers on at this point). So I added 5mm spacers to the rear to widen the gap.

After driving around it was evident that the 225’s were now catching the outer arches when cornering at speed or when I turned in hard - not what I wanted when on track.
So I then raised the suspensions by 10mm to counteract this problem which worked.

The whole spacer thing was really to allow me to run my alloys and tyres without catching or potentially being damaged.

When I spotted Bob’s thread about spacers to help with understeer I decided to try this out and see if it would help. I added 15mm spacers to each rear hub, fitted my ET35 wheels and when out for a test drive. I felt no difference in the handling of the car; it didn’t feel better or worse, so I removed the spacers, changed back to my original set-up and went out for another test drive. Again no difference so I wrote off that experience.

I though about it afterwards realising that the Yoko’s play a large part in grip levels. From a drivers point of view when you know your own car inside out and its mannerisms you can tell when things work or don’t work.
When I test anything I always use the same bit of road so that I can assess what is happening, it helps me to understand what I’ve done and whether it has worked positively or negatively.

On this occasion I found no added value to the cars handling and stored this event with the rest of my experiences.

 

[campbellju]

Thanks Andy, very interesting.

 

[campbellju]

i`ve actually got the whiteline camber bolts front and rear so i can alter it. The garage said they didn`t want to as it`d take too long.

:roll::roll:

for camber guages, you don't need the fancy magnetic type, just something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Silverline-45...14&_trkparms=72:1688|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318

I would look harder but its late and there are others on ebay for about £30.

plumb line and string does work but its not as fast or accurate.

 

[CruiseGTi-R]

Andy, you're saying you didn't feel any difference running a wider stance with a wider tyre either then?

 

[fubar andy]

Running A048R at 225mm helped my grip levels without doubt; wider tyre, grippy compound, bigger contact area, better grip.

However when I added 15mm spacers on the back, I found that it did nothing to the handling or help with understeer.

 

[GTiRlover]

A good read this thread. I had to use spacers to clear my front brakes and noticed an improvement in the handling department almost immediately. I have 10mm hubcentric spacers and extended wheel bolts and the first thing that struk me driving it for the first time was that it turned in better, it felt like there was more grip at the front. They have in no way reduced understeer but then I have a standard track at the rear unlike Pulsarboby and a few others that have contributed to the discussion, whom argue that a wider rear track will help dial it out.

The only downside with the wider front track and standard rear is that under heavy braking the rear does get a bit skittish especially over bumpy surfaces. Also I am not sure what offset my wheels are but they do scrub the inner arches when going over some bumps.

All in all, I am happy with the 20mm wider track at the front- well as happy as you can be running spacers...