Thread: Wheel adapters?

Spacers, to be TRACK legal must be;

Steel. Threaded to take the studs, not press in. Drilled and couterbored/sunk to take the fastener that MUST fasten the spacer to the rotor hat. These fasteners MUST be threaded into the hat AND have a locking type nut fitted from behind.

Suffice to say that as soon as you get above clubsport levels where people make their own stuff and it's not scrutinised as stringently the teams are making their own hats to adjust track to within limits and to suit whatever homoligated rotors they choose to use and suit the caliper offset to suit.

I found 5 bucks on the ground once.

Interestingly......mine came with an engineering certificate as it has 60 series axles. It subsequently gained a Blue slip, and a pink slip. All with Spacers.

Now you would question the validity of all three but where do you start ???

Was the Eng Cert manipulated with greater offset wheels fitted for the inspection ? I think not as the build was fully posted online. Maybe some were borrowed from a mate for the day? Personaly I think not.

The Blue slip was issued and signed off by a highly regarded 4WD centre who is completely independent of the build shop and the engineer.

The pink slip was issued by a reputable (and well known) tyre fitter. And a year later by another reputable autoshop.

So, a set of custom offsets ultimately resolved the problem for day to day road use. The original alloys still see off-road use as I am prepared to take the risk occasionally (and don't want to dump an expensive set of wheels/tyres), but I still have lotsa lotsa questions around certification and enforcement regarding vehicle modifications in NSW???


Ohhhh......and I think that 5 bucks is mine :-)

Originally Posted by FIXR7

As I said....the system is corrupt if you can blame something just because it wasn't "approved" even though it wasn't the cause of the crash.
Properly designed wheel adapters are no less safe than the original hub they are attached to.

Not corrupt at all. The argument is simple, the illegally modified (therefore unregistered and uninsured) vehicle, should not have been on a public road, at the location where the crash happened. The driver of the legal, registered and insured vehicle had a right to be where he was and if the illegally modified vehicle was where it should have been (at home) the crash wouldn't have happened.

Wheel adapters add 2 or 4 additional points of potential failure in the safety critical systems. Vis a vis can not be as safe as the same vehicle without them.

The answer as to why is pretty simple.

Spacers are legal if fitted in the manufacture of the car. A Porsche 924 Turbo had spacers and I believe several of the 911 models.

IMHO the registration authorities trust car makers to understand the stresses involved and design the bearings etc to cope. On the other hand they don't trust "Joe Blow" to understnd the stresses involved .

It is interesting that Toyota do not fit spacers to the rear axle of the new V8 utes even though the track is narrower than the front, even though "everyone" knows the track should be the same. Maybe they know it would cause problems.
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Not a problem then, you can take your car on a trip to any other country in the world and use the adapters.

BTW, if you are involved in a crash where someone is seriously injured and they inspect your vehicle and find anything illegal or not notified, then whether you are in the right or wrong in the crash, you will be considered at fault and uninsured. You will have to pay for the damage to the other vehicle and any injuries to people out of your own pocket.

As they say at the RTA, you can modify your vehicle any way you want, but they don't have to register it.

Diana, you're completely incorrect

Anyhow, just run offset rims, they are cheap enough these days

And I wouldn't worry about the legal wowsers, it just gives them something to type