Wheel Spacers

Snehal Banik · Tuesday at 12:43 AM

I have a 2012 IS250 AWD with 18x8 wheels in the front, and 18x8.5 in the rear. And I am trying to achieve a flush look with coil overs or springs in the near future. For now, I would like to know what size spacers you guys would recommend!

Thanks!

J Henderson · Tuesday at 10:56 AM

15mm front and 20mm rear looks good if you have OEM Lexus wheels.

Make sure the spacers are a quality brand like Eibach or H&R.

Linas.P · Tuesday at 01:16 PM

Impossible to say without knowing wheel offsets. As John said 15mm and 20mm looks good on stock wheel that have +45mm offset, however if your wheel is say +55mm, then automatically you need 25mm instead of 15mm.

Now if you want them "flush", it is really simple matter - park the car, take a square to it and mark how much the wheel is sitting in the hole, get your spacers to match as closely as you can. Again, this is where your wheels offset matters - let's say you have stock wheels +45mm and they are 22mm in, this means you need 20mm spacer to make them as close to flush as possible, however if your aftermarket wheels are +35mm you only need 10mm, and if they are +55mm then 30mm spacer. Obviously, if you already have wheels on the car, then just measure and buy spacers accordingly.

Also 15/20mm works fine with stock wheels and stock suspension height, if you as well want to lower the car, then they may rub... And here it will get complicated as you need to check suspension travel and at what angles it will be moving. The simplest way is to make leave like 5mm extra (meaning don't make them exactly flush), otherwise make them flush and then if rubs roll the arches, but this is kind of done by feel, trial and error, math/geometry on this would be very complicated.

Can't comment on specific brands, but make sure your spacers are hubcentric (meaning the basically lock on hub, not just held in place by bolts). Anything up-to ~25-30mm is safe, but I would not go further than that.

H3XME · Tuesday at 02:36 PM

18x8 (ET45) 18x8.5 (ET50) factory wheels are good with 25mm spacers all round. @TadasC put 25mm spacers all round on his car with the F-Sport wheels and it's flush. Maybe he can send some pics.

H3XME · Tuesday at 02:38 PM

3 hours ago, J Henderson said:

15mm front and 20mm rear looks good if you have OEM Lexus wheels.

Make sure the spacers are a quality brand like Eibach or H&R.

15mm or even 20mm spacer will not clear the studs, so they will be hitting the back of the wheels. You need 25mm and they look bang on too.

Linas.P · Tuesday at 03:03 PM

22 minutes ago, H3XME said:

15mm or even 20mm spacer will not clear the studs, so they will be hitting the back of the wheels. You need 25mm and they look bang on too.

Depends on wheels... many wheels have space for studs to go into. F-Sport wheels from memory does have some space there as well.

J Henderson · Tuesday at 03:08 PM

28 minutes ago, H3XME said:

15mm or even 20mm spacer will not clear the studs, so they will be hitting the back of the wheels. You need 25mm and they look bang on too.

I know what you mean, but it depends what type of wheels OP has. Some have deeper cut-outs on the mounting face than others.

The F-Sport wheels that my car came with originally, had very shallow cut-outs, like barely anything at all, and would definitely need a wider spacer. But the other Lexus wheels I have, or have owned in the past, have cut-outs that are/were a lot deeper.

I have a set of 15/20 bolt-on spacers in my stash, and I'll have to trim a few mm off the end of the studs to use them with my 3IS wheels. Just the very tip that's tapered without losing any of the threads.