Hello fellow owners. New owner here and I can see some threads on wheel spacers but nothing specific to XJ L that satisfied my answer. So please help me out..

I have the 19" Toba Polished Wheels. They look great with 245 and 275 front and rear respectively. I would love for them to fill the arches better

1. Do wheel spacers cause any issues?
2. if not what spacers do you recommend and how thick? (Please note I am super new to it and understand the basics but no means expert)
3. Any links from sponsors..?
4. Factory warranty issues if I install one?

Thanks so much for the answers!

 

ramandanu, I will say that you want to stay away from wheel spacers unless you are getting a rim with an offset that needs to be corrected. This is what I base it on and you can take it for what it is worth. While this can be a problem with the rear tires, it will be more of a problem for the front tires.

Here is the short of the issue. The car was engineered to keep the center of the rim in line vertically with the center of the bearing. This causes the bearing to see minimal side to side loading, resulting in maximum bearing life. When you start adding a wheel spacer, you are pulling the center of the wheel out of alignment with the bearing. So, even with the car sitting still, the bearing is going to see some amount of twisting force where the bottom of the tire is trying to come out from under the car and the top is trying to sink into the center of the car. Obviously, the larger the spacer, the larger this force becomes. It is this twisting force that leads to bearing failure. Is the bearing going to fail in 1,000 miles if you add a 1" spacer. Probably not. In 50,000 miles, the odds are much, much higher.

With this being said, you are going to find spacers in 2 basic thicknesses. You have your 1/4" think pieces and then you have your 1"+ size. The basis behind this is that to get more than a 1/4" thickness in the spacer, you would have to either get longer studs (now the studs are seeing a lot of extra stress since they are feeling this twisting force now) or the spacer needs to be thick enough to allow one set of nuts to be applied to hold the spacer to the hub and then a second set of studs are used to hold the rim/tire to the car. This takes roughly 1".

You can do it, but realize that there may be a price to be paid for what you are after.

 

Thanks Chris. bottom line don't do spacers if I want to keep my nice ride for a while. That's a bummer. I wish I could do something to make the wheels fill in the arches more.


Looks like only option is to get wheels with offset that would fill the arches which is expensive option and I really like the $1500 option of polished wheels...

 

ramandanu, by no means am I saying that you shouldn't. But, any movement of the wheel towards the outside of the car and keeping the width of the rim the same is going to result in what I mention above. You would end up going with a wider rim to push the outside edge towards the body of the car. But, this will also put some of the rim towards the inside edge of the car which can lead to other issues. The big thing is trying to keep the center of the rim as inline with the center of the bearing as possible.

You can space the rims out, but you are going to need to be more aware of issues with your wheel bearings. I play with game with my Expedition due to the 37" tires I have on it. No one can say "if you put a 1" spacer on the car, the wheel bearing life will be shortened by ....". There are a lot of factors that play into this. The big one being how well the roads are maintained in your area. You find that the roads are fairly rough, then the spacers are going to cause the bearings to fail that much faster. If the roads are fairly smooth, then the spacers are going to have a very minimal effect.

Getting a different offset (assuming the rim width is the same) is going to be just like adding the spacers. You are still pushing the center of the rim out of line from the wheel bearing. Only by going with a wider rim can you go with a significantly different offset. Getting a 5-10mm different offset shouldn't have that big of an effect. But then, you are getting a small change in rim location too. May not push the rim out as far as you would like to see. It is all a balance of look and how much maintenance (or worry) you will have.

 

Thanks Chris. BTW my name is Ram and my wife is Anu hence Ram and Anu.
I get your point, this is very good education. Thanks!


The roads in Seattle area are fairly good IMHO. I will take the car to see what are some options. I wanted spacers only because I really like the polished toba, just wanted the rear rims to fill in a bit more.

 

Ram, i know Seattle all too well. I lived in Bremerton for 12 years. Yes, the roads in that area are for the most part pretty good. The driver's a pretty nice too compared to where I live now. I make a trip back that way about once a year to visit family.

If this is something that you want, then go for it. Just understand the "if I get this, it is going to cost me that". Worst case, this is something that is relatively easy to "undo". Just keep your other set of rims for the just in case. After a year or two, I think you will have a pretty good idea of what the effects are going to be.

 

I get it I am going to not do the spacers. I will take the car upto some shops here to see if I can get a wider rim. Thanks. We should sticky this thread so people can read and get clarity!

 

A wise decision, based on rather insightful and knowledgeable advise by Thermo.

Threads like these demonstrate, at least to me, the value of car forums, basically, folks helping other folks.

 

Glad to see you plan not to make such a drastic change with regard to the wheels.

 

Merci! I agree. Value of the forums is all about helping each other. Spacers are super confusing if you are not very mechanically inclined. Thanks to Thermo I will be saving up for nicer rims or maybe just keep mine