Check your spacer and adaptor bolts people!

Otherwise your quiet sunday morning drive to the shops might well end up like mine:



Thankfully no casualties apart from the plastic arch and the wheel. Oh and a new pair of pants…

The chassis didn't touch the floor thank god.

A good reason to not fit wheel adaptors or spacers…  

 Can you tell I'm not a fan of them for the reason you have shown.

Always hated them for this supposed reason but never actually seen evidence of it until now.

Glad all safe and just a bit of cosmetic damage.


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Main reason for today's mishap (apart from me having the audacity to have non standard wheels on my car of course) was due to brain dead previous owner fitting a set of cut down(!) incorrect fitting bolts to hold the spacers on, they were so short and badly cut that they only had about 5mm thread in which to seat them to the drum. Of course I didn't know this until today as never had cause to check… hence my warning to those who have maybe bought a car with fancy adapted wheels or spacers as I did 😬

Was this the car where the wheels poke out one side?

If so take the spacers off and measure the thickness. May have wanted thicker one on the back and thinner on the front. Got them mixed up and put thick one side and thin the other.

Reason the bolt is short might be because it was on the wrong spacer?  

Worth a check as I guess you will have them all off for checking now anyway.

Take the all off and lay them on the ground next to each other and see if there are any differences.


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Yeah the wheel that departed is the one that tucks in. I'd already measured all the spacers to rule that out, shame I didn't remove them at the time to check the integrity of the bolts holding them in! Oh well, you live and learn.

Ordered the correct bolts and got new suspension coming next week so going to do some investigation and measuring while it's up in the air and in bits 🙂

Noticed similar on my mk2 the bolts not quite long enough so could undo behind wheel leaving wheel adaptor attached to wheel and not car. Not refitted since one day will recheck and only for occasional show

I learnt the hard way in my mk2.. doing 60 on a dual carriageway, felt a wobble in the steering so accelerated to see if it got worse, a couple of pulses later as I let off I watched my wheel bounce off to the left and down the bank as I graciously came to a stop!

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Peeps I think the moral of this story is ………. Locktite and a good dose of regular checks for these things.


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Ouch, thought I had it bad with a dinged wheel and a cracked arch.

Backinblack said

Peeps I think the moral of this story is ………. Locktite and a good dose of regular checks for these things.


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Loctite is great until you get a flat and need to get the spacer off to fit your 4 stud space saver 🤣

On the plus side, returned to the spot today and found my departed wheel bearing dust cap at the side of the road, that's a tenner saved on a new one 🤣

Fair point on the locktite. Good
Find on the dust cap. Did you find a wheel repairer?  I know it’s a trek but I use Birmingham wheels.  They did a nice job on my wheels - see my project thread for before and agrees I think may be some pictures there.

Go somewhere that checks for buckles as well as cosmetic refurb. That’s a nasty chunk out the rim so worth getting it fully checked out.


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I havent had any leads yet apart from a guy i have used before who lives round the the corner from me but his paint supplier is shut so no work right now. Will email him some pics and see what he says. I'm sure it will be easy enough to sort, apart from the curb rash it's just that dent really.

With that damage to your Porche 'cookie cutter' wheel even with the possibility of a re-furb, I would replace it  peronally as it might break up later and you could have a bigger crash. I know their hard to find and expensive but how much is your neck worth?

I think they are worth a refurb unless you are fortunate to find 1 replacement alloy ..a good refurbisher would make that like new .as long as the structural integrity of the wheel is sound i dont see an issue with it

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Maybe the damage looks worse in the pics but will see what the wheel refurb chap thinks. Can probably get a used one to replace it easily enough if its dead

Damn, so sorry this happened.

This is why I always add wheels bolts to the monthly checks on my cars.

The worst is my big GMC truck 5 Ton, 520BHP, it always has one of 8 bolts loss.

I've since used locktite and line of paint to see if bolts move. No problems on my mk1 and truck now and the monthly checks help