Wheel Spacers

[slinky]

Mrs S' mother has had some new sport-pack arches fitted to her classic mini...

Trouble is, the wheels are somewhat swamped by the arches..

What's the crack with spacers? Can we get away with running 2" spacers or is that going to put too much stress on things?

TIA,

slinky

[minimax]

if you do go with spacers, change the bearings and monitor them frequently

[RickApple]

I may be wrong but if you upgrade to minifin rear drums i think you can get them with a 1'' spacer built in - should help somewhat, as its the rear on my car which looks 'under tracked' [????]

[miniman]

Pretty sure that at the point where disc brakes became standard on the front (sometime in the 80s?), the rear drums also got spacers as standard. As mentioned above, adding spacers will accelerate bearing wear. Also, make sure you fit longer studs as you might get the nuts to grip on the regular studs, but not really enough to be safe IMHO.

[Cooperman]

If you have the later rear drums,as on the disc braked cars, the rears are already spaced out by about 1" each side. It really is not advisable to go any moe than this as, as already stated, it loads up the wheel bearings. You can go out an exra 1/4" or so to get the really wide wheels to clear the radius arms, but you must fit longer studs which entails 'pulling' the rear hubs off the shafts.
On the front it's not wise to use spacers at if you do it screws up the steering geometry and spoils the handling.
My personal choice of wheel arch extensions are the old 'Group 2' type which carry the chrome trim strip over the arches.
Does anyone agree with me that the early cars with no arches at all still look the best? I saw a 1960 Mk 1 850 over the weekend and thought how evocative it was of the 60's and the fun we had then - all that sex & drugs & rock & roll!!