SRX 17x4" mini spare - it fits!!! (With some work, of course)

AAIIIC · #1 (**permalink**) 11-04-09, 03:35 AM

A teaser shot:

A while ago I had suggested that one could possibly get a 17" SRX wheel to clear the V's brakes, and that such a wheel would make a great spare. I still have yet to get my hands on one of those wheels to test my theory, but a couple weeks ago I found an option that's even better - an SRX mini spare! It's a 17x4" steelie with a 145/75-17 tire. I picked one up (with the tire) off www.car-part.com for a whopping $55 shipped all the way across country - I figured that was a cheap enough price that I could afford to buy one and play.

Once I had the spare in hand I had to figure out how much of a spacer I would need to make it fit (if it would fit at all). Measuring inside the back of the wheel I was thinking I was going to be able to get away with a 2" spacer, but when I actually put it on the car with some bits of metal tubing slid over the wheel studs as spacers it was hitting the caliper. 2.5" didn't work, either, and 3" was looking pretty damn close. I was worried that my idea wasn't going to work out, but I decided to gamble on the 3" and hope that it cleared.

Searching online I found a number of places that made fat ass wheel spacers. There may be cheaper options out there, but the best price I found was http://www.motorsport-tech.com/wheel_adapters.html. Note that you want the "Wheel Adapters" portion of their site, not the "Wheel Spacers" - their spacers aren't thick enough, but their adapters come in fat ass sizes. I did a 1 piece, hubcentric to the vehicle but not hubcentric to the wheel, 3" thick spacer, which cost me $105 shipped. If I had chosen to do hubcentric to the wheel as well I think it would've been another $20. Hindsight being 20/20 I would've spent the extra $20, as the steel wheels have the typical shallow lugnut holes that don't center the wheel all that great. But, again, it's only for temporary use, so I keep telling myself it's not that big a deal.

Today I was all excited at work because I knew the spacer was going to be delivered and I couldn't wait to get home to test it out. Yeah, I'm a little strange.

The monster spacer:

A couple more shots of the wheel installed and how it sits relative to the fender:

Crappy pics of the caliper clearance:

Not perfect, but it clears the caliper by probably 1/8" - 1/4" in both direcations. As you can see from the fender alignment shots, much more than a 3" spacer just wouldn't be practical, but as it is now it won't rub the fender lip. (Keep in mind I'm running ~1" lower than stock on the KW coilovers). I haven't tried it, but I'm almost positive this would not clear the rears, as the rotors are a little larger diameter and the calipers thus extend a bit farther out. It would be really, really close, so probably smarter to just do the double swap if you got a flat in the rear (spare on front, good front on rear in place of bad rear).

I haven't driven the car on the setup yet, but I don't anticipate any issues - after all, it's just a temporary spare, so I don't plan to drive on it for extended periods or at significant speeds. A couple questions yet to be resolved:

(1) If I've pulled over on the side of the road with a flat, how do I install and torque the spacer in place? When I torque lugnuts on a wheel, I lower the jack to rest enough weight on the tire so that the wheel can't spin as I torque the lugnuts. Obviously I can't do that with a wheel spacer being bolted to a hub jacked up in mid-air. So, I'm thinking I'll put a pry bar of some sort in the spare tire well that I can brace across the spacer's studs and use that to apply counter-torque while I tighten the lugnuts to hold the spacer on.

(2) What will Stability Control do? The tire is a bit over 1" shorter than the stock 245/45-18 size, so I'm guessing the size mismatch would not make the Stability Control happy. However, my thinking is that with the flat tire in the trunk, the TPMS will still "see" 4 sensors, so I can just go to Stability Control Off. That's something I'll have to test. ABS will probably be hosed up, too, but again this is just for temporary use, so I can survive without that for 50 or 100mi or whatever.

So, for $160 I have a spare that fits in the spare tire well and actually gets my trunk floor back to being flat. Hooray! It's also 10# lighter (even with the spacer) than the stock wheel and 225/50-18 tire I had been using as a spare, so that's nice - a 0.26% reduction in curb weight!

rand49er · #2 (**permalink**) 11-04-09, 07:21 AM

OUTSTANDING timing! I'm running without a spare at the moment, so this is great! Having the links makes this so-o much simpler, too.

Excellent!

stuckey · #3 (**permalink**) 11-04-09, 07:55 AM

great find

Chubbilicious420 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-04-09, 10:55 AM

I took out the plastic liner and put an extra rim/tire in. Scavenged a jack from a car I sold a while back. Fits fine. Runflats suck. Fix a flat is a good second option. Took 10 minutes or less to get tub out , spare in.,

AAIIIC · #5 (**permalink**) 11-04-09, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chubbilicious420

I took out the plastic liner and put an extra rim/tire in. Scavenged a jack from a car I sold a while back. Fits fine.

That's great, but it's not exactly news. That's what I already had in my car as well...

Quote:

Originally Posted by AAIIIC

It's also 10# lighter (even with the spacer) than the stock wheel and 225/50-18 tire I had been using as a spare, so that's nice - a 0.26% reduction in curb weight!

But IMO it doesn't "fit fine", unless your spare tire well is deeper than mine. With a 225/50-18 on my spare wheel, the cover that goes over the top of the spare tire well won't sit flat - it's up about 1/2" to 3/4" from the rest of the trunk floor. With a stock 245/45 tire on the wheel it's even worse. That's what I wanted to fix by using a smaller spare, and that's that I've done.