Xoutpost.com - Front wheel spacer / steering feel question..

H&R's largest spacers are 25mm and 30mm. 25mm is juuuuust thick enough where they can incorporate 20mm thick steel nuts inside the spacer itself. Those nuts become receivers for the factory wheel bolts. First, you bolt the spacer to the X5's wheel hubs using (5) steel silver bolts supplied with the spacer. Torque them to the same 103ftp that you normally would. That is the last time you bolt them to the car.

Then, you place the wheel onto the spacer.. and rotate it an inch to in between the hub bolts, where the new nuts are. Now bolt on the original factory black wheel bolts into the H&R nuts housed inside the spacer, and torque them to the same 103ftp. Its ingenious.

The same is true for the 30mm spacer.

They can't do it with the 20mm, 15mm, 10mm, or 5mm spacers because they are too thin to accommodate the thickness of the nuts inside.

The front wheels would stick out too far with these same 25mm spacers, so that means you can't use this same design trick. Fronts usually call for 5mm, 10mm, or 15mm at the veeeeery most. In any of those cases, you are "stuck" with having to use super looooong H&R supplied silver bolts that go all the way through the spacer into the car's wheel flange / hub.

Your other option is to switch to wheel studs. This reverses the arrangement so that you are threading "nuts" onto the studs. THen you can order the studs to what ever length accommodates the spacer. Some guys swear by this. The thing is though.. the nuts that go on the studs.. just plain 'ol don't look like a BMW. That simple. And.. they're silver too. TC Kline sells super high end stud kits with black powder coated nuts. They look cool. Really nice. Still not BMW looking, but.. worth a look. But.. they are very expensive.