Aftermarket Wheels and Spacers - confused

I know very little too, lol. When I hear "spacer" I think of spacer rings. These rings are needed with aftermarket rims, when the hub (center) opening is larger than the car's hub. With the stock wheels, either 15" or 17", spacer rings are not needed: the hubs are a close-tolerance fit. They're likely not needed with a lot of other Toyota rims too: I'm using Corolla 15" steel rims with snow tires, they fit just right, no spacer rings needed.

 

no, spacers needed
yes, 15 and 17 wheels can be used, and if the outside diameters are the same at the same time.

if you buy an aftermarket wheel that requires a different offset, a spacer can be fitted, relax

 

If you enter your vehicle on TireRack, it'll show you rims that are compatible for offset, so no offset spacers needed. There's a certain range, slight variation but still ok. They will almost invariably need the hub spacer rings tho.

 

Hubcentric rings, not hub spacer rings.

Used when wheels with larger center bores (than stock bores) are mounted on the car. Centers the wheels over the studs and relieves the studs from bearing the entire weight on the wheel.

Spacers are used to address wheel offset, as mentioned in above post. Offset positions the wheel side to side relative to the hub. Hubcentric rings centers the wheel around the hub/axle.

 

Nope, stock wheels, sans wheel covers.

I've mounted aftermarket wheels on previous vehicles though. Looks good, until some idiot runs a traffic light and crashes into you.

 

Oh, and TireRack will automatically add the required hubcentric rings to the invoice, as long as you've entered your car. Any place would have the same database and software.

Any aftermarket rim will have a hub opening too large: otherwise the manufacturer loses some of their potential customers.

 

I would refrain from using spacers I removed mine after costco noticed that I was using spacers and they will not do any job done unless its remove due to safety issue. If its not done correctly you will have wheels flying on a highway and your safety always be a concern. Look for an aftermarket wheels that has the width of 8-8.5 then you don't need spacers on these kind of wheels.

 

Costco will not mount tires on non oem sized wheels where I live. They wouldn't even mount tires on a size rim that was a factory option on a higher trim level (aftermarket wheel, not oem wheel).

 

I had mine stock but used a hub centric spacers back then to make the rear wheels flushed on the rear fenders. They advice me to take it out after realizing I had spacers on its rear wheels before doing any job.