Wheel spacers - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

stunt · 05-25-2005, 02:31 AM

Hi i buy the wheel spacer 17mm for the front and 21mm for the rear!
Somebady have the spacers? Is not dangerous for the bearing of the whells?
Bye

PAH · 05-25-2005, 04:04 AM

From what I have read, the bigge rthe spacers, the worse it is on wheel bearings, as it creates extra stress on the bearings. I understand that 5mm spacers are fine on the road, but not recommended if you are going racing or autocrossing. However, 17 and 21mm spacers may be a different matter.

I bet they'll look good though!!

stunt · 05-25-2005, 08:27 AM

Ok when i put the spaceers on y car i'll take the photo before and after for see the difference...

I think it will be more nice!

RandallNeighbour · 05-25-2005, 08:55 AM

An Italian guy in a Porsche. I bet you get a lot of dates with beautiful women, huh?

Perfectlap · 05-25-2005, 11:29 AM

17mm and 21mm?
That's BIG SPACE!
are you sure that's the size?

who makes the spacers?

I would suggest putting on only Porsche spacers.

Those wheel bearings according to BruceL. are $600 EACH!

Make sure your wheels have the EXACT correct offset and your lug nuts are not over or under torqued. Too much torque and you could be looking for trouble.

Stryke · 05-26-2005, 09:17 AM

I had the 5mm Porsche kit all around with Sport Techno's and it looks wicked!

I sold the car so I don't have it anymore but I would not go anything above 5mm on a Boxster both for looks and for mechanics.

ntmatter · 05-26-2005, 11:32 AM

Also keep in mind that the Porsche spends millions of dollars on getting the suspension geometry of a particular car just so - spacers will mess this up and the bigger the spacer the worse your handling will be. The same applies to wheels - wide wheels with big offsets look cool, but most will underperform the stock setup at the track.

Adam · 05-26-2005, 03:48 PM

There must be alot of ill-informed info out there because I was told that wider is better for the handling. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Porsche widen the 987 1/2-1inch over the 986?

PAH · 05-27-2005, 03:27 AM

I'm seriosuly thinking of getting 5mm spacers all round for mine. The Turbo Twists (Version 1) look good, but the extra 5mm would fill the arches perfectly. It's just difficult to justify the cash for such a small piece of round metal!!!

CincyFreeze · 05-27-2005, 12:52 PM

Can someone post a picture of a boxster with spacers on it? How much different over stock does it look? More agressive?

ntmatter · 05-28-2005, 12:05 AM

I'll move this note to the front of this post because I realized I got into a bit of a rant and want to stay on-topic: Wider is not necessarily better for handling. The 5mm spacers would be great to make the car look cool, stay away from anything bigger until you've at least tried these.

Anyone who says that wider is always better is uninformed. Wider MAY be SOMETIMES better for CERTAIN applications, but you want to be careful. Picture in your head the interaction of the upper and lower control arms, shocks, steering linkage, etc as your wheel travels through it's full up-down range of motion. Imagine the industrius Germans wearing white lab coats in huge computer labs refining the exact angles and positioning necessary of the entire suspension system to get the best weight distribution and chassis handling through all of the suspension loading scenarios. These calculations take into account the mass distribution in the car, the flex and other characteristics of each part, the behavior of things like wheel bearing under load; in short, a lot of planning goes into the stock setup.

Now, move the tires out an inch or so but don't change the spring rates, shock load and unload rates, steering geometry, or alignment settings. If we're talking a 5mm space you'll get a nice look and probably won't notice much if any difference one way or the other under most street and even track scenarios. But, if you move the wheels out 30mm each, then the car's just not going to handle right if you really get on it.

I've tried to use spacers on my last track car (not a Porsche, but same principles) and in the end couldn't get around the fact that spacers ended up making the car look cool but caused problems. These included some nasty torque steer, rubbing the wheel wells, weird handling, and I kept burning up wheel bearings and breaking lug bolts.

As with fancy air intakes, you can do them for the performance look, but be realistic in your expectations.

jfmillr · 05-28-2005, 08:12 AM

I used the 5 mm spacers on my Turbo Twists for almost a year. They looked great. I ultimatly sold the wheels and spacerts to someone else on this board, and went with wider rims with no spacers. and got the same effect if not a better one. I ended up getting 9" wide wheels in front and 10" wheels in back and this looks far better then the spacers did. Just be careful that yur tires dont rub the wheels wells. Some minor modifications might be required inside the wheel well if you do this and have the lowered suspension. i had to melt the plastic in two spots to prevent my tires from hitting when steering wheel is cranked in either direction.
Do yourself a favor, if you use wheel spacer , use the porsche ones. They come with the extended lug nuts and you want to be very careful to make sure you do use an extended lug nut with whatever spacers you choose. You can run into some real trouble if you try using your factory lugs with the spacers. Wouldnt want you wheel to break off under the added pressure at high speeds.

FUHRIUS · 05-28-2005, 08:27 AM

I bought the car like this last fall...stock wheel size 7.5/9" 53/50mm offsets) with TechArt spacers, 15mm front and 21mm rear.
I'm not going to get into this religious battle about stock setup being perfect vs. modded cars and effects of wheel bearings/ handling, etc.
I can say that I think the car looks great...it's a really noticeable difference in the appearance of the car. My car is also lowered approx 1 inch from stock s (so it's basically the same as if you'd ordered the 030 option (or whatever it is called). It also handles really nice...they all do. But I'd driven maybe 6 or 7 different used s's before I bought this one and I think the handling is improved with the drop / width. The anniv car came stock with 5mm spacers and the 987 is considerably wider, so I'm not sure that spacing out a 986 is all that bad...I suspect it will put extra stress on the wheel bearings.
I'm actually swithing out this setup next week for a set of kinesis k58's in the same color scheme (black centers, polished lip)...they're 8.5" front and 10 rear, with 996 offsets, so I'll end up using the 21mm spacers in the rear with no spacers in the front. Hope this helps.

FUHRIUS · 05-28-2005, 08:34 AM

from the back...and with the original rims on the car (turbo twists) so you can get a better sense of whay the spacers look like with stock rims.

FUHRIUS · 05-28-2005, 08:37 AM

the rear, the way the car looks now (with clear tail lights and single black 'S' badge.

Adam · 05-28-2005, 01:02 PM

We carry 1/4 inch spacers here at Mid-America that are hub-centric and the lugs are included. They only cost 60 bucks a pair so I think I will just get these instead spending double that or more for the "official" Porsche spacers which are probably very similar and do the exact same thing.

Brucelee · 05-28-2005, 03:58 PM

Hey Adam

We would love Mid America as a sponsor on this board. Can you help us out on that?

I think they would get a ton of sales by being here.

Thanks!

Adam · 05-28-2005, 07:24 PM

Yes, I definately agree bruce. I will bring it up to some people when I go back to work next week. I have already directed a few boxster customers to this board in the last few weeks since it is such a good source of info for the boxster owner. In fact, I was talking to a customer in Cali on Thursday I believe that he bought one of our trueflow intake systems. He was curious about desnorkling his 98 and I just told him to do a search on this board and he would have the answer. Anywho, I will let you know what they say.