Need Tech help! -- 5mm Spacers causing wheel misalignment

john_d13

Greetings folks,

I was at the shop yesterday installing some hub centric 5mm Spacers with Extended Studs (Ichiba to be exact). Installation was rather seamless but after taking my car for a ride I noticed the Rear Driver side Wheel wobbling through my driver side mirror. Frantically shaken I drove back to the shop cautiously.

Car is up on hoist with driver to simulate wheel movement and in fact it is wobbly. Note only the Driver side, passenger side rear is perfectly fine.

So here are the things we tried in order to find the common element that was causing the problem:

1. Swapped Wheels, passenger side to driver side. Issue was still persistent. Rule out a wheel issue.

2. Swapped Spacer from passenger side to driver side. Tested both wheels and issue was still persistent. Rule out Spacer issue

3. Removed spacer on Driver side. Issue went away, tire completely aligned now.

The only common element left are the extended studs and lug nuts and that would completely make no logical sense to be causing the wobble, my only rationale would it in fact cause wobble if the studs are faulty and when the wheel is mounted on a particular thread it triggers this offsetting ?


I am now stuck with extended studs and no spacers that probably wont fit on my stock rims + lugs. I am now dabating weather to try replace the studs and try again with spacer or just put stock studs back on.