The same wheels don’t fit every car. The width, diameter, and backspacing will vary depending on the design of the car, as well as the center bore size and lug nut pattern. Sometimes people want to change out the wheels on their car to change the look, and there are usually lots of options for an exact fit, but sometimes there isn’t and they have to do some sort of modification to fit the new wheels.

One simple modification to get a wheel and tire to clear suspension or body components is a wheel spacer. It’s basically just a disc that goes between the wheel and the brakes, available in different thicknesses, to move the wheel outwards. There is some debate on how safe wheel spacers are, it really depends on how well they fit and are installed, but the ideal solution is just to get properly sized wheels for the applications.

Then sometimes people take the very unadvised route and stack multiple wheel spacers to get the clearance they need. Also in the case of this car, they needed to go from the 4-lug hub to a 5-lug wheel, so one of the spacers has to also be a conversion for that. Either way, the more spacers you stack, the more likely there is to be a failure, with all of the hardware connections holding it all together. You don’t want your wheels to fall off, so buy the correct wheels and don’t stack wheel spacers.

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-Dan