What do alloy wheel spacers do exactly and how do they fit on the car???? I've got a set on 17" octavia wheels for the Fab VRs and thought about spacers., but not sure what they do. It was my understanding that they make the wheels petrude out more from the wheel arach and thus give the car a fatter look? Am i correct ------ also, do they have any effect on handling etc???

Thanks guys.

Also, if you dont know about it yet - go and take a look at the AMD 1 click Group Buy that i've organised - it's the ****

One of the reasons is for brake clearance. I have also heard that spacers can exagerate torquesteer

Hi

As far as I know, spacers are used to adjust the offset (the sideways position of the contact patch relative to the hub / steering axis). If the offset is incorrect, the car will handle and steer poorly, be unstable under braking and acceleration and possibly wear out tyres quickly or unevenly.

You should only use wheels of the correct offset. it might look "fat" but at what price?

Chris

Spacers will indeed make your wheel look 'phatter' but alas can also mess up the car's handling big time and also make your tyres catch on the wheelarches in a worse case scenario. Our Ibiza cousins will often be found to be sporting rear wheel spacers due the the curious styling of the Beezer that makes the rear wheels look too far into the arches. Luckily the Fabia doesn't suffer from this.

If you want to put spacers on the front then be very careful indeed. On the rear, a little bit less so, but don't go too mad.

I would strongly recommend visiting SEATcupra.net and doing a search for 'spacers' and 'hubcentric' as there is masses of info on there due to the Ibiza's need for the things. You will find that you must purchase quality hubcentric spacers and just as importantly top quality longer wheel studs - to stop you having big problems with wheels deciding to go their own way!

By the way, did you mention the groupbuy you were organising????!!!

Hurry up folks - time's running out........you don't want to be kicking yourself on Monday.....

They bring out the wheels a bit more, and improve handling.

However, do not go for cheap replicas, and don't go for very big ones. I've fitted 12mm H&R spacers per side to the rear wheels only. Oversteer has been reduced, handling is much better and it looks much better.

I have heard that if you put stupidly huge spacers you are most likely (if you drive over alot of bad roads) to mess up the bearings. This is also apparently possible if you fit them to the front wheels, because they're the 'steer' wheels (which is why I haven't touched the front). So be wise in your choice and don't get all to excited and fit 20mm spacers

give the car a fatter look?

Why not put 215/35/17 tyres on. Surely they'd look fatter?

I'm running 215/40/17s but that's on 17"x7.5" rims. I think Octys are 7" width.

John.

They bring out the wheels a bit more' date=' and improve handling.

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Err improve handling? One of the less attractive properties of most front drive hatches and the Fabia vRS most definately is the understeer. Anythig that reduces roll steer (lowering, increasing rear track, stiffer rear arb, etc) will make the cars inherent understeer less defeatable.

If your idea of improved handling is to increase the propensity to understeer, then yes, you will improve handling by fitting rear spacers. You may also wear out your wheel bearings quickly.

Chris

Chris GB,

I meant to say UNDERSTEER is reduced, my mistake. Why would increasing the rear track increase oversteer? And 12mm spacers per side? And why would the wheel bearings suffer from just 12mm offset? I put H&R spacers in with the correct bolts. That's like saying wider wheels with a 12mm offset will have bad effects on the car, and as far as I know, many briskodians have put in wider wheels with different offsets.

And I don't drive a vRS, I drive a much lighter 2.0.

Chris GB' date='

I meant to say UNDERSTEER is reduced, my mistake. Why would increasing the rear track increase oversteer? And 12mm spacers per side? And why would the wheel bearings suffer from just 12mm offset? I put H&R spacers in with the correct bolts. That's like saying wider wheels with a 12mm offset will have bad effects on the car, and as far as I know, many briskodians have put in wider wheels with different offsets.

And I don't drive a vRS, I drive a much lighter 2.0.[/quote']

Hi Mil

Apologies in advance for the long post.

I find that with most front wheel drive cars, understeer is increased with widening the rear track or increasing the roll stiffness. Certainly, a dodge on Mk II Vauxhall Cavalier SRI was to incerease rear track by 8mm a side with spacers to reduce the snap oversteer these cars could get into. This also lead to rear wheel bearings lasting 10,000 miles at best. I had changing them down to a 15 minute a side job with mine as I changed them so often. Mind you, the car was "enthiusiastically driven" at every opportunity. The wear increase is caused by having the wheel centre of axis drag mis aligned with the bearing axis. This causes the wheel bearing to experience forces similar to if you car was continually going around a corner, even in a straight line, thus increasing torsional or across axis load and hence wear.

If you put spacers on the front wheels, this can reduce the impression of understeer in a way. What happens is you get a little less roll steer, however, you also gain some drag steer. This is caused by the wheel centre of drag being further outside of the steering axis. Whan you turn, you effectively have a higher leverage or ratio of drag opposing the castor,which will make the car feel like it is turning in better. However, you are not really surpressing understeer, just making the front end more "pointy".

I always regard understeer / oversteer as being the difference between the slip angle of the front and rear wheels. The best effective cornering balance is achieved when the car has the same slip angles on both front and rear tyres. (The tyre has an optimum slip angle at which it yields its highest cornering force. The closer both tyres run to this, the higher the cornering speed generally). This condition requires some natural oversteer to achieve. The geometry changes triggered by the car rolling under cornering load are known as roll steer, and this is engineered in byt the chasis designer to help a driver produce the desired oversteer or neutral angle. Increasing the wheel spacing will reduce roll steer ever so slightly, but will also change the effectiveness of the castor and in cars with independent rear suspension, will affect the roll steer geometry changes at the back as well.

For my tastes, the Fabia vRS is set up just right for the road. Yesterday I overtook someone who then decided to speed up and chase me (even though they had not been above 40 in the 60 limit until I overtook them). Coming into a roundabout to turn right, (at around 40mph on the slick wet black coating that covered Essex yesterday) the Fabia gave me a very nice trail brake oversteer attitude in drift, which I was able to hold for around 50m on gentle throttle with virtually no steering applied, before exiting by just applying a little more gas and the tiniest flick of opposite lock to end up going straight again at maybe 55mph. Checking the mirror saw the boy racer behind dropping around 30 metres from my tailgate (where he was when we entered the roundabout) in an understeering and rather wobbly exit:D Now we all know that the Fabia vRS is front heavy and there is no getting away from this, but the engineers who set it up had millions to spend and hours to work at it. Now if they could have made it better by adding 12mm to the offset, I reckon they would have done it. Besides, if the chassis is that malleable, why mess with it and make it potentially more prone to component wear and instability?

Chris