How to PROPERLY Install Wheel Spacers

what's up everybody's Charles today we are installing wheel spacers on the Golf R alright the hot topic of wheel spacers are they good are they safe is it gonna make your car flip over we're gonna be installing front and rear on the Golf R today we're going ten millimeters up front and fifteen millimeters in the back now you may be thinking Charles why are you installing these wheel spacers is it worth it are they gonna damage your car the main reason we're installing these is cosmetic we're gonna bring these back wheels and front wheels out just a little bit to improve the overall look of the car now we may change the handling characteristics of the car a little bit but ten millimeters and fifteen millimeters aren't really that much this should be just enough to bring the wheel and tire assembly out to sort of be flush ish flush ish flush I like flush flush ish with the fender line some other reasons people run wheel spacers are running wider tires or wider wheel and tire assemblies we may also add them for things like clearing a bigger brake kit perhaps we're adding a wide body kit to the vehicle and we want that proper fitment of wheel tire assembly and fender or we're installing aftermarket wheels and the offset is different so we need to push the wheel out just a little bit we are going to be installing these from shop DAP my man Paul hook these up for me appreciate you Paul let's look at these as well as some wheel spacers that you definitely don't want to use Shh all right so here are the spacers that we are going to be installing on the Golf R these of course are from shop DAP this is the rear kit these are 15 millimeters so they're gonna bring our wheels out just a little bit notice that we have the hub centric ring for the wheel to mount we also have the hub centric Center for us to mount this onto the hub in addition to that of course we have our longer wheel bolts to compensate for adding the spacer onto the hub here we have our standard length wheel bolt this is actually a locking wheel bolt and here is our extended wheel bolt for our spacers you can see quite a bit of difference in the thread length we need to make sure we have extended threads to compensate for adding the spacer in if we don't replace the wheel bolts we are not going to have enough threads check out how little thread would actually bite by the time we got the wheel on it would probably be almost nothing compared these wheel spacers nice hub centric perfectly aligned holes little notch so that when we're ready to take it off it comes right off with these things these are what you get at the generic parts store these look at how big the opening is would not fit correctly on this car or comparison look at that now this is probably a different bolt pattern than what I would need as well but this is the kind of stuff you can just buy it doesn't come with any extra wheel bolts doesn't come with studs lug nuts anything like that so if you're gonna add spacers I would not recommend something like this these are gonna be a much better solution things that are actually made for the wheels you're running the hub diameter and the wheel bolt pattern speaking of wheel bolts let's bring back our factory length bolt there's something I want to make sure I point out to you guys when we're thinking about wheel spacers and wheel bolts or lug nuts and factory or aftermarket wheels there's something a lot of people don't think of and that's the seat of the bolt or the lug nut notice this is curved this is what's called a ball seat most VW Audi wheels are ball seat wheels that means there's a corresponding rounded part on the wheel that allows us to properly torque and fully seat this bolt the other style is going to be this style this is conical notice how it's flat not round you can see very clearly the difference here on these two wheel fasteners while most VW Audi factory wheels are ball seat and a lot of aftermarket ones are too like the wheels I'm running on the r32 there are a lot of wheels that are conical like this with a cone shaped rather than a ball shape if you don't install conical on conical or ball on ball you could run into an issue where your wheels aren't gonna be properly torqued this is a lug nut off on Mazda Miata you can see clearly that its conical and this is our factory locking wheel bolt notice that our extended ones they got that same ball shape so we're gonna be good to go here this is something a lot of people don't think of when they're upgrading wheels wheel spacers or anything like that you want to make sure you get the right bolts for the wheels that you're putting on conical or ball seats so there you go lesson out wheel spacers what not to you what to use if you're gonna do it wheel bolts and everything let's go get these put on the car and see how they look now I already have the are off the ground all four wheels if you guys want to watch a video on how exactly I did that I'll be sure to link that up if you are lifting your car up we are taking the wheels off so be sure before you get it off the ground to loosen those wheel bolts up just a little bit so that you're not rocking the car back and forth while it's on jack stands or if you have something awesome like an impact gun then it doesn't matter you can go ahead and zip them up alright let's go ahead and get our wheel removed first we got to take our wheel bolt caps off this is the tool that comes with your toolkit also Springs from mark four seats work pretty awesome but this is what we got so this is what we're gonna use next we're gonna remove our wheel if you don't have a protective socket like this one that's cool I actually like these a lot so I'd recommend getting one but if you don't have one or when we're dealing with our wheel lock we don't want to just zip this out with an impact gun so we don't want to risk damaging the wells for our wheel bolts so what we can do we can take our wheel bolt wrap it in a little bit of electrical tape just get the lip a little bit to this way we don't have to worry about marring up our wheel at all or at least reduces the likelihood of it don't want to put too much tape on it otherwise it doesn't fit take our wheel bolt get our impact gun go ahead and zip it right out we'll go ahead and take the rest out once you get the bolt that's at like the twelve o'clock or so position grab your wheel hanger and thread that in if you don't have one of these guys I'll link them up you really want to consider getting one now we can run the rest of our bolts out now rather than our wheel falling all the way off we can just slide it right off on the hanger all right so here's our hub assembly with our rotor this is really guys as simple as just sliding the spacer on just like that but before we do that I want to look at a couple of things here is our well where our hub is going to ride on this is why using a hub centric spacer is so nice if we use the other style it's gonna be really hard to torque our wheels down properly as you can see that doesn't really even come close to fitting not only is this not hub centric but it probably wouldn't even be lug centric because it has this room to move around now hub centric means that this hub right here is what's gonna Center the wheel lug centric means a lug bolts or nuts are gonna Center the wheel luckily for us these are hub centric so we can just slide them right on but before you do that you want to make sure this rotor surface is completely clean we also want to make sure this hub surface right here is completely clean rust dirt debris any of that can cause our spacer not to sit properly what we can also do is take just a little bit of anti-seize around the hub surface and you can even put a little bit on the rotor if you want what you don't want to do is you don't want to put it on the lug bolts that can impact our wheel bolt torque and we really don't want to do that now we'll take our spacer we'll go ahead and install it you can even take a little bit of anti-seize around this part right here of the spacer make sure it's lubricated now if you're taking your wheels off and rotating them every 5000 or so miles probably no need to do that so that's pretty much it it doesn't get much easier than that let's go ahead and put the wheel on and I'll show you how to torque these down properly something else you want to make sure that you do is clean the mounting surface of your wheel if this has dirt or debris on it it can impact how our wheel sits on our spacer or on the hub in general and may cause us not to be able to torque our wheel down properly also a good opportunity to clean your dirty wheels which I'll go ahead and do real quick alright let's go ahead and put our wheel back on now remember we have our extended length wheel bolts this is how I put wheels on sometimes it takes a little longer but it's worth it because it basically guarantees that you're gonna properly torque the wheel we're gonna take our extended bolt we're gonna start it we're gonna do that for all five bolts now we just want these hand tight this doesn't matter whether you're putting wheel spacers on with extended bolts or just the factory bolts you want to just do this hand tight all the way around now while the car is still off the ground you're supposed to torque the wheels to 30 Newton meters in a star pattern so we're going to go one two three four five at 30 Newton meters one two three four and five now when we lower the car down we'll torque these two 120 Newton meters and that'll be our final torque this initial torque is to get the wheel set properly plus we don't really want to be torquing to 120 Newton meters while we have the car off the ground until we get the car on the ground we're done with the back let's move to the front now we're basically gonna do the same thing on the front as we did on the rear the only difference is we're gonna use a 10 millimeter spacer on the front and we used a 15 on the back now you'll notice that it says for MQB front only the reason you have to go at least 15 in the rear is because of this hub they couldn't machine it thin enough but still have the hub centric ring deep enough in order to make it fit and like I said we want to make sure we're using a hub centric wheel spacer so we're gonna just do a quick test fit looks pretty good pull it back off clean our mounting surface put just a tiny bit of noses-- anti-seize on here a little bit on the face remember not on the bolts if you want you can run your wheel hanger off take your spacer give it some spins that will distribute the anti-seize a little bit more evenly I'm gonna hang my wheel hanger back on because it's gonna make doing this a thousand times easier put our spacer on make sure that the hub surface on the wheel is also clean free of dirt debris rust any of that kind of stuff again that can impact how our wheel gets properly mounted go ahead and put our wheel back on notice I'm holding it at the bottom with my foot that just keeps it a little bit more stable and we'll go ahead and start our bolts we want to make sure that we use the bolts in the kit for the 10 millimeter spacers that way we have the right length to compare here is a factory length bolt and here is our one that came with the 10 millimeter spacer kit definitely wouldn't get enough thread grab with this one so you got to make sure you use the right deal take our hanger out thread our last bolt in and torque all five of these bolts down to 30 Newton meters you may have to hold the tire a little bit so it doesn't move around while you're torquing these to 30 Newton meters all right now in the front we actually have another step that we want to do we want to make sure that while the car is up in the air we don't have any clearance issues odds are if there's going to be clearance issues you won't see it while the cars up in the air but since we already got it here it's worth doing just a quick sweep of the steering wheel all the way lock left all the way lock right just to make sure and of course we're gonna do that again when we get the car on the ground to make a hundred percent sure we don't have any clearance issues all right so that's it we're gonna do the same thing on the other side remember a little bit of anti-seize torque the bolts to 30 Newton meters all the way around then we're gonna put the car on the ground and do that steering wheel sweep again to make sure we don't have any clearance issues the next thing we want to do is we want to roll the car back and forth a little bit it's gonna settle the suspension out let's rotate the wheel lock to lock make sure that we don't have any clearance issues once we confirm no clearance issues it's time to torque the wheels properly to a hundred and twenty Newton meters all right we're gonna torque these in a star pattern just like we did before this is 120 Newton meters and of course same thing in the front all right once everything's torqued down and you check to make sure you have any clearance issues I was going to actually put the wheel caps on these new wheel bolts but something you want to be aware of these do fit they will work however the OEM bolts have this hole in the center of it what that means is that when it has a wheel cap on it like this you can use your factory tool go all the way in and pull the wheel cap off pretty easily these replacement bulbs do not have that hole so if you're gonna be using these factory style wheel bolt covers you're gonna either need to get a pick a really thin pick and get in there to get it out or maybe the Audi style ones will fit better but unfortunately these are probably just gonna be more of a pain in the butt than they're worth so I'm not going to put them back on the car right so there we have it a nice and easy install we learned that these are no good don't use this kind use the hub centric kind the kind made for your vehicle also I want you guys to do me a favor if you are installing these wheel spacers after about a hundred miles or so go back and recheck your torque just to make sure it's still good make sure you're using the right wheel bolts and because we've changed the length of the wheel bolt for our spacers what I really like to do and this could be totally like way paranoid thing of mine but I like to take five wheel bolts and put them in my tool kit that way if you get a flat and it for whatever reason the wheel won't cooperate with the spacer maybe you have after mark wheels and spacers accordingly for those it's a good idea just to have five extra bolts of the factory length just in case go ahead and throw them in your tool kit and you'll never have to worry about it again unless you have to all right guys so that's it I'm gonna wrap it up questions comments drop it down below big ups to Paul and the boys over at shop D ap for this really great wheel spacer kit thank you guys so much for watching and I'll talk to you next time

Channel: HumbleMechanic

Views: 300,601

Keywords: are wheel spacers safe, don't install wheel spacers, wheel spacer fails, wheel spacer before after, wheel spacer install, humblemechanic, mk7, vw golf r, golf r, shopdap

Id: S7UXjzm_Nkk

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2019