wider rear track with wheel spacer

[Normand]

As anyone ever installed wheel spacer to increese the rear track.
I'm thinking of adding 1/2" on each side.
Will that extra inch show in the Insight's cornering ability.

[Yves M.]

Hi Normand,

I am not sure but would expect that the rim would not be touching the center of the axel. Therefore all of the car's weight would be on the bolts instead of the center axel. It could be dangerous to break a bolt while hitting a bump. And lose a wheel, No?

Did you already thought of it and have some way to extend the center axel.

I would suppose that a wider rear end would help tracking in road ruts.

Maybe rims with a different "offset" would be easier. For eample if the OEM has 38 mm offfset, get rims with 50 mm offset for the rear and 38 for the front (I do not know if this is a real option)

[Holicow]

That's an interesting thought.

Yves: good spacers essentially extend the hub, so there is not a concern with unsafe loading.

Widening the rear track will affect the alignment, but how much of an impact this will make I can't say.

[Sparky5501]

A 1/2 inch wheel spacer should bolt to the drum and then have studs in the spacer that the wheel bolt to. I would avoid a spacer which uses a longer stud to span the difference, as these could break. This style is what Yves was alluding to. Even though these wheels won't see any kind of torque, better safe than sorry. The first style I mentioned are used on Porsche's all the time and have a huge amount of torque applied to them. I haven't heard of any failures for the dual bolt style. They go all the way up to a one inch spacer.

Don't worry about the alignment it won't matter in the rear anyway cos you can't adjust it. I'm running wheels with a wider offset and the alignment in the rear is still within factory spec.

You could probably go up to a 3/4 inch wheel spacer and still get good wheel clearance with the side skirts.

And finally yes, your insight will handle better on the road and probably not tramline as much.

[Normand]

Where can i get those

[Sparky5501]

Looks like H&R makes both styles...

http://www.hrsprings.com/site/products/trak.html

[Corey872]

As mentioned, if the spacer is well designed, there shouldn't be any problem with transferring the load to the bolts...ideally the spacer would have hub-centric rings built in to mate to the wheel and hub. But reguardless of the design you are moving the wheel load outboard of the wheel bearing which will cause a higher torsional load and most likely lead to accelerated bearing wear.

I also think the ad is kind of funny when the ad quotes:

If you've ever seen a sleek, European sedan with that oh-so-low street stance and a bulging wheel/ tire combo that just barely tucked under the wheel wells, chances are that car was fitted with H&R TRAK+ wheel spacers

This is probably not really the case...if the car is tuned for true performance, they probably selected a wheel/tire combo to maximize the amount of tread on the tire (ie use the perfect offset for maximum width) with the wheel spacer all you are really doing is moving a skinny tire "X" inches outboard to make it look like a wider tire...but you still only have the rubber of the skinny tire.

[Calpod]

I recently installed in the rear some 205/45 17 (from my civic SI) and the car looks owesome, I drove with them for 2 days, did not take any pictures, but when I took them off I put them on a scale, the stock tire and wheel combo weighed at 22 lb. the 17's were at 42 lb.
After seeing the weight difference I don't think I'd put the 17's again, even if it looks that good, maybe I'll put them on just to take some pictures.

[Holicow]

Originally Posted by Calpod

I recently installed in the rear some 205/45 17 (from my civic SI) ...

Ha Ha! It must look like a funny-car with that wide rubber in back! Yes, need pics!

Let me be the first to ask: Did you have them on long enough to tell if your mileage was affected?

[Sparky5501]

I was thinking about having skinnies in front and wides in rear. Put 5.5 wide rims up front and 7's in the rear and the track should almost be equal. Only problem is finding rims that are the same diameter but differnt widths.