Wheel Shims

[longhallage]

Is it acceptable to add shims to widen the track of a stock corolla (with standard steel wheels)? will this upset the suspension by altering the offset (i saw this mentioned on a website)?

Thanks, Nick

[Unity Jon]

you can add wheel spacers to push the wheels out into the arches more but you'll not notice and benefit from it, hardly worth it really. It will hardly have any noticeable affect of you suspension either

[Monster-Mat]

not entirely true unity jon, widening the front track......to much and this is totally dependent on the car involved can have an adverse affect on steering and handling.

infact bordering on bloomin scarey

[Unity Jon]

the track of a stock corolla (with standard steel wheels

wont hurt here.....

in fact its pointless, plus the biggest available 'off the shelf' spacers i've seen in 100pcd are 1"......

not quite sure where the guy is going with this, a stock car with stock wheels might as well just stay stock unless its a 'looks' thing ? or he has those annoying blobs in the road and a slightly wider track will let him get a wheel either side :P

[longhallage]

Thanks for the advice. I was just trying to get some handling benefit, thought it was worth asking. Took the car up to South-->Mid-->North wales the other day. 700 miles of fast A and B roads. Brilliant, took in many car mag testing roads! Lessons learned: I'm going to change the brake pads to EBC greenstuff V4 (450 deg. C+) as I got considerable fade from standard pads and also some fluid fade (nasty) which I intend to solve with AP551. This was the first real test for the brakes as I've not had the car long and I don't think the previous owner had bedded the pads in properly resulting in GREEN FADE on the (luckily, private military range) road at 80mph!

I have spoken to two different tyre fitters who both assured me I could fit 185 width tyres on a 5.5J rim, and both thought I could squeeze 195's on (but didn't advise it). I would like to get a bit more torque down out of low speed corners and finding good quality directional/asymetric/sticky tyres is hard on a 165 width. I have decided to go for Yokohama A539's (185/60R14) - £29.90 each + delivery from tyresonline.net - on a seperate set of rims for dry touring . The softish compound should help as will the wider width. The wet performance, however, may not be ground braking, but I can sacrifice that! Now, if only slicks were road legal...

A great site for cheap tyres is tyresonline.net

AP551: www.apracing.com/car/brakefluid/index.htm

EBC grenstuff: www.ebcbrakes.com/

Thanks for not letting me waste money on shims if they will do nothing.

Nick