We use wheel spacers on my wife's Toyota 4Runner. We're still running the stock wheels, but the all-terrain tires are slightly oversized. She doesn't baby this car (that's why it's so dirty).

The benefits of wheel spacers, and their drawbacks, are generally controlled by what kind of spacers you get and what size you go with. For starters, you'll need to get a spacer that properly fits ...

The spacers come in two sizes to make a AA into a C- or D-cell battery. Think of the spacers as a sumo-wrestling costume that makes the wearer look more like a helium balloon than a person.

All that being said, wheel spacers are a cost-effective way to keep the wheels you have (or adapt a different lug pattern wheel) while increasing your track width.

Most wheel spacers bolt onto a truck's axles or hubs, and include studs that wheels are mounted on. Adapters, on the other hand, also have studs, but they're arranged in a different bolt pattern.

On wheel-spacer-equipped vehicles, the effective lengthening or staggering outward of the wheel also generates elevated mechanical forces like the lengthened tire iron.