Wheel spacers questions …

Thinking about 15mm spacers on rear and 7mm spacers on front … would appreciate input on a) whether this makes sense to widen the stance b) is this the right amount of additional width, and c) does anyone have suggestions about the best value spacers to use? Question for my ‘09 BS. Thanks in advance.

Spacers with stock wheels are strictly for cosmetic reasons, to push the wheel out and fill out the wheel well. Spacers are used for functional reasons with aftermarket wheels to get them close to the offset of the stock wheels. Normally aftermarket wheels have a universal or common offset and you use the spacers to get the same offset as factory. Using spacers for cosmetic reasons is not a good idea...you can throw on a 3mm spacer with little difference on stock wheels. You can go up to 5mm and push the wheel out more for looks but you are changing the suspension geometry and this is a bad idea on a Porsche who spend millions of euros designing the best suspension in the world. By the time you get to 10mm more offset, the wheel is pushed out and has more leverage as it rotates on the fulcrum point (the control arm mount) which means you are softening the suspension. That is the in the rear. A 15mm spacer on a stock wheel is the beginning of terrible idea in my book in the rear. Your tires are no longer riding on the center of the tire, unless you realign them. In the front it is worse as the tires turn to steer and by pushing them out, you have softened the front and again the front tires are no longer rotating at the point Porsche wanted them to rotate, the are rotating more inboard and this affects your scrub radius. The crazy thing is that if you go with big spacers in the front, I have noticed it with a 10mm spacer in the front, the steering gets lighter on center, but heavier when turning which makes you think you are getting more grip when in fact, it is simply increased effort required to sustain a turn because the tires are fighting each other in the turn. I experimented with spacers myself because I really wanted BBS wheels and they didn't have the correct offset, so I bought every spacer they made and played with them. I recall putting a big spacer in the front and taking the big sweeper I take every day in my house. I'm holding the steady state turn and it feels like I'm pulling 1.5Gs with the steering effort, but I look down and I'm going 5 mph slower than I normally take it. So if you want to play keep the changes small. You own one of best engineered suspensions on the planet, don't mess it up. Finally another lesson I learned is about wheel bolt lengths. Some of the spacer bolts that I bought for 3,5,10 mm spacers were actually slightly shorter and not giving me the 7.5 minimum recommended turns. BBS bolts that came with their spacers did but they only had chrome bolts and I wanted black ones, so I ordered other black bolts that were supposedly for the corresponding spacer but they were too short. Make sure you get the right number of turns to hold the wheel in. I ended up using the +5mm bolt on the 3mm spacer, a +10mm bolt on the 5mm spacer and a +15mm bolt on the 10mm spacer and made sure it didn't bind on anything. Anyway, I see people do it all the time and no one dies and as I said, the can give you the illusion of better grip as steering effort increases the bigger the spacer gets. I hope that helps.

I would start with 18 r and 10 f on OEM wheels. Yes, you will be putting more pressure on the shocks, swaybars and springs, but you will also widening the track to reduce weight transfer slightly. 7mm f and 15 r will work fine, but once you put them on you may think you could have gone a little wider. If you change to wider wheels these spacers may work there depending on their offset. This is my winter setup with OEM wheels and Michelin PS4 's. I use 15 mm f and 23 mm r ECS spacers on 57 offset f and 43 offset r wheels. I do have Ohlin coilovers so plenty of spring rate (400 lbs/in f and 458 lbs/in r) and shock valving to control the added stress/torque from the spacers provide. This stress is manifested on the rubber suspension parts, so having Tarett Cup LCA's with solid monoball bushing certainly helps and provides added camber -2.9 f and -2.5 r to protect the outside tire shoulders. Over the years I have collected 5 sets of ECS spacers to go with 3 wheel/tire setups. 5,10,15,18 and 23mm each with their own black lug bolts and phillips head alignment screws. On the track, I use different widths spacers to change the balance of understeer/oversteer. Usually maxed out the offset in f and some space to the fender in the rear depending on the swaybar setup (Tarett GT 5 hole f and 4 hole r).

Personally I don’t see any issues with spacers. I’ve done this to ever car I’ve ever owned from 3-20mm spacers and with the correct length of studs, doesnt seem to hurt anything I’ve experienced. In some regards it’s not much different than putting on a more aggressive offset wider aftermarket wheel. It could wear rubber parts faster but I’ve never seen it

Spacers are fine for a street driven, never taken to the limit car. I mean a few spirited runs and cruising will not really stress the system. Sure over thousands of miles there may be some percentage more wear, but doubt you would know. Get a good alignment and you should be fine. If I was tracking regularly and putting the car at the limit I would not do spacers.

Over the years I’ve seen countless teams running spacers. You just need good materials and long studs.

For me it’s just another potential failure point, where there may be a better way. Doubt anyone has any real data on failures vs success, so risk is a not unknown. If your experience is good go with it.

Porsche sells their own spacers as a build option. 99.9% of all reported failures, which are rare to begin with are caused by improper centric fitment or bolt bore size. So its an installation failure and not due to using spacers themselves But I get the other side as well. I always try and get the wheel offsets as close as I can get before using spacers if needed. They should not be used to make a terrible fitting wheel offset work. If you need to go huge, then do the work and source a better wheel offset starting point

I hear you about doing the offset homework for the new wheelset. But then along comes track days with the accompanying outside shoulder tire wear. Oh, I need new Tarett Cup LCA;s to get -2.9 camber f and -2.5 r. Where some of this camber comes from is the shims on the inboard end of the LCA. Tarett says that their limit is 20 mm but really 10 mm is as much as should be used. Each shim mm is equal to -.1 degree of camber. So that 10 mm shim equates to -1.0 camber. This 10 mm LCA shim is subtracted from the wheel offset so now the offset is 37. So, back to the shop and have a camber plate installed and reduce the LCA shim so the wheels fit and do not hit the wheelwell lip. Not sure how many times this happens but a lot according to my shop as owners get real tired of wasting a good set of tires in 3-4 track days on their new wheels. I am purposely leaving out the middle step of adding just enough camber by lowering the shim amount to not cause the tire hitting the fender. Then after another 4-5 track days more bad news about outside shoulders wear. More camber needed so camber plates is added to solve the camber problem. The only problem with this solution is the camber plate bearing wears our very rapidly and is very noisy. So new wider light weight track wheels with the correct offset should be the last track item added. If you have no intention of tracking your car, then this modification application is not applicable to you.

wheels offsets have gotten better with the styles etc. But yes lots of us are picky for a host of reasons. The forums are usually a good source for asking what will fit etc but there are just so many variables. Cayman ’s have the oddest rear fender line nearest the inlet I knew Porsche had spacers as a build option which should say a lot right there… wonder if VW offers that since I flushed out my Tiguan . It gets old having to pull these off for service as I’m sure they through a stink about certain warranty items 🤣

The Tiguan looks good like it should be! It seems Porsche is really good at building the cars to be "almost" where they need to be from an aesthetics standpoint, knowing that they can then sell you something else to make it how it should have been from the start. For example the huge SUV fender gaps on the standard suspension, when the X-73 look is what they should all look like from the start. The factory rear wheel offset for the 981 is at least 12-15mm too far in which looks weird along with at least 5-7mm up front, hence all the spacer questions and popularity of the mod. I think Chevy is doing the same as the C-8 Corvette just looks all sorts of wrong to me. Some of them I've seen look like you could place your hand sideways on top of the tires and still not touch the fender edge, and the wheels are too far inset. Yet others I've seen look much lower and flush like a sports car should

thanks! Ya the good news these R-line Tiguans have 19x8.5” wheels with 255’s… it was easy making this look like it’s more business… performance wise!!-uhhh-no!! It’s awful! Euro rigs have 280hp… but not f’ing here!! Anyway ECS offered a 12.5/20mm kit.. perfect!! Ya it looks way better and makes the wheels almost look aftermarket not many oem’s have the offset thing dialed in.. I have noticed that it’s always the “upper line” 4 main German oems have that all worked out. AMG, ///M, |||S and of course the RS cars… the other models have good bones but the rear fenders could support a dead animal in the gap… hate it!! the new Vette is bad, but the lower end stang must be the worst….

been using them for years.. never seen failure like some say. I race my porsches, street drive them, get on them pretty hard etc. I've never seen a failure or had to replace parts because of them. just my two cents.

Agree x100. It’s a myth that there bad.. when folks have issues is usually the chit material/fitment not hub centric spacers with 4 turns of thread

I’ve been tracking mine for years… many makes of cars… Road course and autox.

Well, I am one of those guys you are referring to running OEM wheels with 23mm spacers in the rear and 18 mm in front using Ohlins coilovers. I did that for a year or so, then read a thread about wheel bearings going out due to the additional stress from the spacers, so I changed the whole suspension and added Tarett Cup Race LCA's to give more camber -2.7 f and -2.4 r. I had to get new spacers as the Cup LCA's has shims that push out the track to gain camber. So, I got 10mm f and 15mm r. The next year there was a need for light weight monoblock Signature SV104 wheels, 9 inch wide f and 10 in wide r, off set 47 f and 35 r. Then got a set of Titan 7 TS5's and mounted Hoosier slicks on those forged light weight wheels. Their width is 9 in f and 10in r with an offset of 46 f and 35 r Even so, I still use spacers, 5mm though in the rear as I increased the front camber to -2.9 with the Tarett LCA shims push out the track so no spacer required for the front. All the spacers are from ECS, each with their own bolt length and alignment philip's set screws. I have torqued these bolts, before each track event at home then at the track. Arcfash wanted me to get racing wheel studs, but I like the flush look of black bolts.

Just reading through this forum tells me the failure rate is likely very low. The internet tends to bias to the negative, as people post problems way more then posting that something is working fine. There is still some risk but it is likely smaller than I thought. Granted this thread is a small sample size.

Race car teams have used these for decades… that’s enough for me… good materials, longer studs, hub centric… you’re good to go

something no one mentioned in this thread is using spacers for big brake clearance. specifically, on my 350Z, but it's the same with every car. at the track 2 weeks ago, I was running backup OEM wheels with the Akebono 370Z Nismo brakes and kept hearing a rubbing sound in the front left, even minor vibration in the wheel. I thought, of course, damn, something wrong with the new calipers or pads. but I was happy to find that it was just wheel balancing weights rubbing against the caliper after they heat it up and expanded a little bit. anyway, 3mm spacers are tiny and they make a world of difference in cases like that.

There lots of good reasons to use spacers… race car teams have been using them for decades, so when using the proper length studs and quality materials there is no safety issues whatsoever…