I installed 20mm H&R spacers for the rear wheels and used the supplied longer studs. At 65mph and 75mph I'd get a nasty off-balance wheel shake from the entire rear of the car. I took it to Kauffman to have them try to rebalance the tires to compensate for the spacers...but they only do off the car wheel balanacing. They found that one wheel did need to be adjusted and rebalanced it. The horrible shake is gone but now at 80mph I have what feels like a normal out of balance shake, not nearly as bad as before.

• Do I need to find a place that balances the wheel on the car?
• Should I take the spacers off and move them around to try to fix the problem?
• I had NO shake before the spacers were installed.
• I DID install new rotors and pads at the same time...but they went on very easy like every other brake job I've done.

Has anyone else gone through this after installing wheel spacers?

FYI - the rear wheels now look sick pushed out! I don't want to take the spacers off.

Thanks,
Eric

 

off topic but where did you get the spacers? i'll buy them if you don't want them.

sorry to be no help.

 

Do you also have huncentric rings installed or are the H&R spacers hubcentric? If not then go to your local tire shop and get some cause it will help with the vibration since you have after market rims. Also, try to find a shop that does road force wheel balancing. Hope this helps.

 

• I used to have rings but the H&R spacers had a lip so I did not re-use them when I installed the spacers.
  
• The H&R spacers are supposed to be hubcentric.
  
• I got the wheels over a year ago and I'm not getting new ones. It's the spacers or nothing. I'm pretty sure you can't get a different offset on these wheels since there is no lip/center to move in or out. Either way, it's a mute point now.

 

Yeah, spacers are centered and the wheels are centered.

The tire place tightened everything down to make sure the lugs were all the way through and the nuts were making everything snug.

I think I just need to take it to my friend at another tire place where he can balance the wheel on the car to correct for the spacer.

 

If the wheels were ok before fitting the spacers, I would dump the spacers.

Having to jump through hoops to balance already balanced wheels on the car simply means either the spacer is up to maggots or not centred or its causing the wheel to not be cented - either way, its not on.

What happens if you get a flat somewhere and need to fit a different wheel? - have to jump through the same hoops twice then? (once for the spare and once for the repaired wheel)

 

H&R spacers are made to fit stock wheels...... your aftermarket wheels have a larger hub diameter. That is why you had hubcentric rings before getting these spacers. These rings should slide over the lip on the spacers. As of now it doesn't sound like you're wheel centric but only hubcentric.

 

That makes sense, I'll look into getting new rings or putting the ones on from before. But the wheels seemed to fit snugly over the spacers...

 

FWIW, not always an option with certain choices of performance wheels.