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| Member |
I recently purchased an aftermarket wheel and tire package from an online dealer. Everything went smoothly and as agreed upon. Included in the package were hub-centric rings. I installed the wheels myself and am happy with them, but there was a slight shimmy at highway speeds so I took the car in to a local tire shop to rebalance the front wheels. The tire shop said that the wheels were already perfectly balanced but that the problem was most likely one of the hub-centric rings, which was now out of shape. The rings were perfectly shaped when they arrived so the problem occurred when I installed the wheels. When the wheels arrived the rings were held in place on the wheel by a single piece of clear packing tape. When I removed the tape the rings could easily fall out of the wheel. This is where my question lies: Does that indicate that the rings were the wrong size? Should the rings fit more snugly into the wheel? I was not present in the garage when the wheels were removed from the car so I don't know if the rings were snugly mashed into the wheels at that point, but before being installed on the car the rings were loose. Since the one ring was sort of mangled the tire shop removed both front rings and right now there are no rings on the front wheels. I have contacted the online dealer and they are sending another set of rings at no charge and they should arrive today. So should brand new rings fit snugly into a wheel, prior to that wheel being installed on the vehicle. I'm trying to determine if the online dealer is sending the wrong size rings. I've never dealt with hub-centric rings before so I have no idea if the rings are correctly sized or not. So if you are familiar with hub-centric rings and their use, please chime in. Thanks for any help.This message has been edited. Last edited by: wbw, | ||
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Cat Whisperer |
I would NOT drive that car with those wheels without the rings. they should fit in the wheel but not need to be pressed in. You can put the ring on the hub, if it fits without moving, it's the right size. ------------------------------------ 135 ├┼┼╕ 246R | |||
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| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm.  |
Yes, you need those rings to center the wheel on your hubs, or else the wheel, instead of turning smoothly, will wobble. Their being deformed suggests to me they might have been too tight of a fit on the hubs and got squashed when you tightened the wheel. Try a remaining good one and see. They should push on easily, but not too easily, and not have a gap. If they have to be forced or won't go on at all, they are too small. They must fit the same way in the wheel. | |||
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| Member |
When you say "They should push on easily...." are you talking about first putting the ring on the hub, then installing the wheel? I had put the rings in the wheel and then installed. | |||
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| Cat Whisperer |
it shouldnt make a difference, I put them on the hub first, one of my techs puts them on the wheel first ------------------------------------ 135 ├┼┼╕ 246R | |||
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Only the strong survive |
Some aluminum wheels like American Racing do not have the hubs spacer and ride on the bolts only. I always felt this was a bad design since the bolts took all the stress and load. I would see if the spacer fitted on the hub correctly with a snug fit and then also check the fit on the wheel. If these two given are correct, use a liquid fastener to keep the hub spacer on the wheel therefore eliminating any movement when installing the wheels that could get the spacer deformed during installation. 41 | |||
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| Member |
In response to Egregore above: Either way, I can still see where these plastic rings can get mangled. The wheel and tire combined are 50 lbs. There is no way to place the wheel on the hub with surgical precision, so I can foresee more misshaped rings in the future. I live in Pennsylvania now so each year I will have to take the car to an inspection station for a safety check. I'm sure that they will remove one or both front wheels to check for brake wear. Also the wheels need to be rotated periodically. Each time that they are taken off and reinstalled is an opportunity for these rings to get squashed. Starting to think that aftermarket wheels were a bad idea. | |||
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| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm. |
In case the spacer unknowingly falls out while I line up and install the wheel, I put them on the hubs first. | |||
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| Only the strong survive |
So the spacer is plastic and offers no load support? 41 | |||
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| Member |
You just answered one of my questions then. So the ring is not necessarily a tight fit in the wheel. My rings were not. So my rings may be the correct size. I didn't know if the looseness indicated an incorrect size. | |||
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| Cat Whisperer |
the ones I use are anodized aluminum. It makes up the difference in size between the hub and the part of the wheel that goes over the hub. most "made to order" wheels like HRE, BBS, etc. dont use them. ------------------------------------ 135 ├┼┼╕ 246R | |||
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| Cat Whisperer |
it should be a snug fit, you should be able to install and uninstall them in the wheel by hand, but there should be no play. ------------------------------------ 135 ├┼┼╕ 246R | |||
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| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm. |
Being as this is a firearms forum, think of it like a gun fitting in a holster.  Snug, but not so tight you can't insert or draw the gun from it without excessive effort. | |||
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| Only the strong survive |
With steel wheels, the tire load rests on the hub while the studs mostly hold the wheel to the hub. With the American Racing wheels I have, all the weight is on the studs since there is no spacer between the wheel center cut out and the hub. But I don't recall seeing a case where the wheel sheared off the wheel studs With the aluminum spacer, some of the load would be transferred to the hub. Looks like you could use Loctite to hold the spacer to the wheel. 41 | |||
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| Member |
Not really. The ring just centers the wheel to the hub, the clamping force of the lug nuts creates a friction bond between the hub and wheel and that is what bears the load. | |||
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| Member |
*** This is an update: I received my new rings this afternoon and pulled a front wheel off. The new rings are a different size than the rings that were shipped with the wheels. The new rings fit perfectly on the hub but are a bit too large to fit inside the wheel. So now I will still be driving without rings on the front. But when I reinstalled the wheel that I had removed, I was very careful and studied the wheel and hub relation before adding the lugs. It seemed like a real good fit to me. No looseness that I could detect. Of course this is seat-of-the-pants measuring because at the moment I have no instrument to measure the hole in the wheel. Maybe I could use the inside diameter from the new rings and the outside diameter from the old rings and have the dealer make me another set of rings to those specs. | |||
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Cigar Nerd |
You're overthinking this, the wheel is kept straight on the hub by the lugnuts. The plastic centering ring is just that, a centering ring. You'll be just fine without it, just like the 1000s of cars and big ass lifted trucks I've seen without them. There will be whores, tits and sex. | |||
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| Only the strong survive |
My thinking is that the hub ring is used to just help install the wheel and has little or no bearing on the wheel load transferred to the axle. My American Racing wheels do not have the hub ring and it is just a matter of aligning the holes to the studs. 41 | |||
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| Member |
Basically correct, there are two types of wheel/hub alignment that I know of, hub-centric and lug-centric. Obviously hub-centric uses the ring to center the wheel, stud-centrics are centered by the use of conical or ball lug nuts. None of the wheels that I have used in 40 years of driving (including aftermarket) have used a ring, but my newest rig is an 08 Nissan so that may play a part in my experiences. | |||
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| Member |
yes, but. If you have a lug centric wheel none of this means anything. If you have a hub centric wheel you care. I've had this issue on my Subaru's so long that its second nature. The spacer should fit snugly in the wheel, it should fit snugly over the hub. If it doesn't somethings wrong. It can fall out of the wheel and it can be easily removed from the hub but it shouldn't be loose. You should install it before you mount the wheel and on the wheel side. I like a bit of grease on the wheel side to make sure it doesn't go anywhere. Feel uncomfortable about that, just use a tiny bit of RTV. It only has meaning at the time of the mount. Once the lugnuts are tightened the load is not on the spacer. As for age, I have spacers on BBS wheels that are 10 years old and have been mounted/demounted hundreds of times no issues. Normally after awhile they just stay in the wheel, but I normally remove them and zip tie them to the wheel so I know they won't get lost. “So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.” | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge ** Update down the page ** Know about Hub-centric rings and aftermarket wheels?
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