996 Turbo S - Wheel spacers

[Mc F]

Anyone tried using spacers / extended bolts on the standard Turbo S Twist wheels?

Looking at my more modern (spaced) cars filling the arches, feel like tweaking the old hammer

From top of external bodywork / arch to rim is 25mm back

Size recommendations appreciated?

Same question for 997 GT3, but not on the to do list just yet.

[pete]

I had 7mm front and 15mm rear spacers on my old 996 Turbo S, with the standard hollow spoke 18" wheels. I can't say I noticed any handling changes, good or bad, but they did look nicer. The only thing I regretted was not going a bit wider at the back, as 20mm would have fitted comfortably.

The usual caveats apply to make sure they are hub-centric, and for wider rear spacers you're probably safer to use the type that bolt directly to the hub, then use studs attached to the spacer to mount your wheels. I didn't like the idea of having much longer bolts on the back, although I had the simpler "bolt through" type on the front.

[Mc F]

pete said:

I had 7mm front and 15mm rear spacers on my old 996 Turbo S, with the standard hollow spoke 18" wheels. I can't say I noticed any handling changes, good or bad, but they did look nicer. The only thing I regretted was not going a bit wider at the back, as 20mm would have fitted comfortably.

The usual caveats apply to make sure they are hub-centric, and for wider rear spacers you're probably safer to use the type that bolt directly to the hub, then use studs attached to the spacer to mount your wheels. I didn't like the idea of having much longer bolts on the back, although I had the simpler "bolt through" type on the front.

Thanks Pete.

18mm hubcentrics available locally , will try source 20mms for the rears.

7mm fronts - from a rough measure I thought they could take 15mm.

Did 7mm fronts look good

👍

[pete]

I am sure that wider front spacers will fit, but I was more wary about changing the relationship between the tyre centreline and the steering axis, as that would screw with the handling more than a bit more track on the rear. All this was 5 years ago for me though, and I was happier with a more subtle change given I was also running standard ride height springs and dampers.

[Mc F]

Thanks Pete.

[ATM]

Steering feel will change. I noticed this when going from no spacers to 15mm spacers on my 996. But this was with the teeny tiny 17 inch wheels and super slim 205 tyres. So these give much better steering feel to the bigger wider 18 inch setup. Also my car had super stiff suspension and bushes and roll bars so even more steering feel than a standard softer more squidgy 996. Without spacers the steering was light and delicate with more chitter chatter feeling. With spacers it felt chunkier and muted. One or the other isn't necessarily better. It depends what you want. An earlier narrow body 996 has ridiculous almost comedy wheel arch gap when it is lowered a lot especially with the 17 wheels.

[Slippydiff]

pete said:

I am sure that wider front spacers will fit, but I was more wary about changing the relationship between the tyre centreline and the steering axis, as that would screw with the handling more than a bit more track on the rear. All this was 5 years ago for me though, and I was happier with a more subtle change given I was also running standard ride height springs and dampers.

ATM said:

Steering feel will change. I noticed this when going from no spacers to 15mm spacers on my 996. But this was with the teeny tiny 17 inch wheels and super slim 205 tyres. So these give much better steering feel to the bigger wider 18 inch setup. Also my car had super stiff suspension and bushes and roll bars so even more steering feel than a standard softer more squidgy 996. Without spacers the steering was light and delicate with more chitter chatter feeling. With spacers it felt chunkier and muted. One or the other isn't necessarily better. It depends what you want. An earlier narrow body 996 has ridiculous almost comedy wheel arch gap when it is lowered a lot especially with the 17 wheels.

Lots do it (fit spacers to the front of their cars) but it can result in sub-optimal handling, primarily because it effects the carefully designed pivot points, specifically the scrub radius. Here's some nice bedtime reading on the effects it can have :

https://www.theautopian.com/our-suspension-enginee...

https://suspensionsecrets.co.uk/why-you-should-not...

https://www.carthrottle.com/news/what-scrub-radius...

The best (albeit expensive) ways to fill out those front arches more convincingly is with wider wheels with the correct ET numbers, or do a proper widetrack conversion using either OE Porsche adjustable GT3 lower arms, or similar aftermarket items, along with adjustable top mounts.

The maximum width spacers I'd fit to the front of any 996, would be those used by Porsche themselves, in the case of the 996 that would be a 5mm spacer (used with the relevant longer bolts Porsche supply) though in all honestly, fitting a 7mm front spacer shouldn't present any handling issues, but once you're into the realms of 10,12,15mm items, you will change the scrub radius to the detriment of the handling.

Edited by Slippydiff on Sunday 9th June 12:01

[Mc F]

Thanks for the feedback.

So 7mm max to fronts.( don’t want steering feel to deteriorate notably)

Worth doing 20mm to rears ?

Maybe new wheels the go.

Does anyone out there no the correct offsets / info needed if I wanted a better fitting seat of wheels.

I do like the BBS look and see them running 19s ??

[Slippydiff]

Mc F said:

Thanks for the feedback.

So 7mm max to fronts.( don’t want steering feel to deteriorate notably)

Worth doing 20mm to rears ?

Maybe new wheels the go.

Does anyone out there no the correct offsets / info needed if I wanted a better fitting seat of wheels.

I do like the BBS look and see them running 19s ??

15-20mm on the rears, no problem.
19” wheels on a 996, looks a bit weird aesthetically IMO, and the 996 chassis wasn’t designed around 19” wheels originally. I’d stick with 18”.

[ATM]

Mc F said:

Does anyone out there no the correct offsets / info needed if I wanted a better fitting seat of wheels.

If you change the offsets from factory this is the same as adding a spacer - or removing if you go the other way.

So I'm not sure what you mean by better fitting. If you want wider to fill the gap between wing and wheel then lowering the offset or adding a spacer will do this. But if you don't want to do this then you need to go wider on both the outside and inside edge.

I also tried this on my 996. I ran 4 rears so that's 9 inch rims with 255 tyres. It rubbed a tiny bit on full lock.

Edited by ATM on Monday 10th June 09:56

[Mc F]

19s as fitted to YouTuber Rajs 996 Turbo S.

Look nice to me but I will try the spacers first with the turbo twists for the OEM look with a mild tweak. 👍