Wheel Spacers.

[X5girl]

I have decided to try and fill my wheel arches a little more by using wheel spacers. As I have 315 tyres on the rear and 275 on the front, wider tyres were not an option and I already had the 20" E70 wheels on anyway.

So this was how it was done:

Firstly, the car was jacked and supported on one side.



Next, the rear wheel was removed together with the hubcentric ring. Then the hub was thoroughly cleaned with a wire brush



Before fitting the new 15mm rear spacer, together with the original hubcentric ring seen as blue



The wheel was now refitted with the new, longer 50mm bolts.



Similar procedure with the front, removing the (orange) hubcentric ring



and installing the new 5mm spacer



followed by the original ring



and the wheel with new 40mm bolts, this time, the original locking bolt being long enough to use.



So here is the kit we started with



and here, in order are the before and after result.



























I feel that the 15mm spacers are a little too wide seeing as I am using the E70 wheels and may really need the extended arch trims to look right. I now need to decide whether to reduce the rears to 10mm or get some arches.

Decisions, decisions!

X5Girl, xxx

[Naz24]

wow! that looks absolutely awesome

[chilliwilli]

I vote for the wheel arches. Looks great but ummm...those look like E53 4.8iS wheels not E70

[LeMansX5]

Originally Posted by chilliwilli

I vote for the wheel arches.:

What do you have from ACS?

[chefwong]

Nice writeup. You forgot one thing. Be generous in putting antisieze on the backside of the spacer as well as both hubs....

Makes removing wheels and spacer considerably easier

[J.Belknap]

Nice.

[dpgx5]

Looks sweet so you went with an even longer bolt (50) in the rear? I think i saw 45mm for a 15mm spacer... So there is more room for longer thread, could you of have done 55mm? I am trying to decide what im going to do after I install my lemans fenders, but your thread helped out. Thanks!

[LeMansX5]

Originally Posted by chefwong

Nice writeup. You forgot one thing. Be generous in putting antisieze on the backside of the spacer as well as both hubs....

Makes removing wheels and spacer considerably easier

very important. I always do that.

[flatlander]

Wow! Very nice! Excellent post.

[TaMbALoLoNg]

where did you get the spacer kit? looks sweet.