How Do Wheel Spacers Affect The Alignment Of Your Vehicle?
Some car enthusiasts will add a nifty little accessory to their cars to widen their wheels. We know them as Wheel spacers. Whether a car owner wants to widen the wheels just for appear like doing it to increase the vehicle’s traction doesn’t matter. When you change the distance that your wheels are from each other, it can influence other things. That they say it some may doubt if adding wheel spacers affects your car’s alignment.
Many have a question, do wheel spacers affect the alignment? Proper and correct installation of your tires will not affect your tires’ alignment. Wheel spacers should give a gap for each wheel to the same distance. Thus you should align the tires after their installation. You should take your car for realignment after you have installed wheel spacers.
Thus it will make sure that no misalignment has occurred. They design wheel spacers to make the distance between the wheels wider without prejudice to the functionality or safety of the car. With most things in life, it is important to see if that is true. Just because wheel spacers aren’t designed to affect the alignments of a car’s tires doesn’t mean they won’t. This article will help settle all your uncertainties about wheel spacers and, more specifically, whether they will affect your vehicle’s alignment.
How Wheel Spacers Can Affect Alignment
Wheel spacers are pieces of metal between your wheel and the wheel hub. Further, wheel spacers should not affect the alignment of your car tires alignment technically in any way. However, it does not mean they are inept. If you install wheel spacers correctly, they can maintain your alignment properly. As you may have guessed, if any of the wheel spacers are loose or installed incorrectly, it will cause the entire wheel to be somewhat rancid or vibrate, and it may cause uneven tire wear.
Even if it loses one or two bolts, it can cause vibration and, in due course of time, causes more bolts to loosen and very much the alignment of the tire. If it continues, things can take a big turn for the worse. Further, it makes your entire wheel to become loose and come off. It is also significant that they tighten all of the bolts attaching the wheel spacers evenly, or you can have the wheel spacers sit unevenly. Thus it makes the tire alignment to be ‘off.’
The procedure of aligning your tires is quite a simple practice. That method includes adding things like wheel spacers onto your car. It is important to attend to the alignment process of your tires, as it not only ensures accurate steering but also helps distribute tire wear evenly. It is also a very specific activity, making it understandable if you have any concerns about wheel spacers affecting your car’s alignment. Since wheel alignment is very specific, it will affect even small things. However, if you align your car once, it should be fine for a few months.
Do We Need To Get An Alignment After Installing Wheel Spacers?
If you install your wheel spacers perfectly, you do not need to do any alignment after installing them. However, the truth is that we do not live in a perfect world. An enormous number of things could happen when you install wheel spacers to cause misalignment in your vehicle. It is not necessarily a bad installation of the wheel spacers that could cause the need for an alignment. Though it says nothing about that, you must align your tires after getting wheel spacers installed, and we highly recommend it.
Although an alignment may sound like a pain, it is well worth it sometimes, and it takes time to get one done. It could justify realignment if you get something bumped or something in the wheel hub shifted when you put the tires back on. An alignment will often cost between $100 and $200, which will be much cheaper than buying brand-new tires because one got worn down faster than another.
Many sites and people we have talked to suggest you don’t need to worry about having an alignment done on your vehicle after installing wheel spacers. Alignments are something simple that can do quickly to help cars drive more smoothly and help save your tires in the long run, so it would be worth doing. It is not essential, and your car will run fine without it. But, whenever anything related to a car’s wheels is done, it never hurts to have an alignment done.
Do We Need To Remove Spacers Before Getting An Alignment?
Suppose you have an alignment done on a vehicle with wheel spacers; you do not need to remove them to do the alignment. Wheel spacers are attached to the car securely and will not affect the car’s alignment after you have aligned the tires.
It should not distinguish whether the wheel spacers are ‘on or not’. The reason is that the alignment should stay the same ‘with or without’ the wheel spacers. You should refrain from removing wheel spacers while performing an alignment. There is no reason to align them and then add them back on. It would risk the alignment being no longer correct after putting the spacers back on.
Most likely, you are not going to be performing an alignment yourself. You will not even have to worry about removing the wheel spacers. We presume you would like to remove the wheel spacers while doing an alignment. If it is the case, the car technician performing your alignment should be aware of these spacers. Further, before performing the alignment, you should know whether you want the wheel spacers removed. Taking ‘on and off’ wheel spacers is only an extra step. Further, it can truthfully be a hassle. Therefore, we are confident that the wheel spacers will stay on in most situations.
How To Know That Wheel Spacers Are Negatively Affecting Alignment?
Signs that wheel spacers negatively affect your vehicle’s alignment are extra wear on either the ‘outside’ or the ‘inside’ of your tires. You find similar signs when your car is out of alignment, even without spacers. If you have aligned your vehicle and do not notice any wear type, start to notice wear after you have installed wheel spacers. Then it will be your greatest warning that the wheel spacers are the reason for any misalignment.
Suppose you observe your car not moving straight while holding the steering wheel steady. If the car’s alignment is correct, it should not happen, but it could indicate a problem with the steering column. Another sign is that the wheel spacers may negatively affect the alignment. If you notice its occurrence, you have to take it to a shop to have a diagnostics’ test run’ by a technician. Thus, they can figure out the problem precisely.
You may have a problem with your wheel spacers coming loose. Then, it is better to examine what type of wheel spacer you have. ‘Lug-centric’ wheel spacers often add less security than ‘hub-centric’ wheel spacers. Therefore it may be a reason. Suppose you are doing any activity that puts your car under pressure. In that case, you have to make sure that you have ‘hub-centric’ wheel spacers because the design of the ‘hub-centric’ spacers permits them to attach more sturdily than ‘lug-centric’ spacers do.
