sorry guys, noob question. and i did a search. it came up with hubcentric rings forsale. i tried to find it on tirerack.com as well. and found some threads on other forums about it, but they don't explain the purpose of them. what are they for?

 

Rims are not made for each car. So they make the center of the rim larger to fit several different hubs for several different cars some are larger some are smaller. Then they sell hubcentric ring to fill the gap between your make and model cars hub to the size hub on the rim to center it properly and to be perfectly balanced on the car.
If you do not use these on these style rims they will never be centered or balanced properly!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by crxhybrid1320 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If you do not use these on these style rims they will never be centered or balanced properly!
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Just wanted to add that basically your lugs will be they only thing supporting you wheel which is not good. This can lead to your lugs backing out and then your wheel falling off.

 

I doubt a lug would back out if it had 80 lb-ft of torque applied to it. Also when the wheels are torqued, I believe the hub/brake rotor still ends up supporting the car, just from the pressure of the wheel and hub being pressed together (think of pushing 2 objects together and then picking them up).

But I do agree that you should have them on there to keep the wheels centered and reduce chance of wearing out the wheel bearings.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by eh3 93 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Just wanted to add that basically your lugs will be they only thing supporting you wheel which is not good. This can lead to your lugs backing out and then your wheel falling off.</TD></TR></TABLE>

my brother used my 14 inch civic steelies on his 97 200sx for a good 3 months. Winded up STRIPPING his studs and having a veryyyyyyyyyyyyyy wobbly and noisy car. Those tires were on my car with NO problems and a quite ride even after he removed them from his car. Needless to say he won't be using my rims/spares anytime soon.

 

When my wheels were installed at Discount Tire, the tire guy put the rings on initially and then took them off. He mentioned something about the rings breaking. I don't recall specifically as this was almost 5 years ago. Anyhow, it's 50,000 miles later and I haven't had any problems. I still have the rings sitting around somewhere though.

--
Tom

 

would you need hubcentric rings for 16" rota slips on a civic?

 

I alway thought that the reason lugnuts and thier respective matting suface on the rims were tappered to center the rim on the car?

 

There are two types of wheels. Hubcentric and Lugcentric. Hubcentric wheels use the hub as a centering device. As you can guess lugcentric use the lugs to center them. If you are using different hubcentric wheels on a car that came with hubcentric wheels, I would say you need to use the spacers. The reason behind that is to properly center the wheel on the hub. Of course you can run them without the spacers, but that could also lead to premature failures in other areas. I would venture to guess it creates extra stress on the lugs and the bearings and probably premature tire wear. If you are spinning an object around a center point that has extra space it is not going to rotate concentrically.

Example...take an onion's rings when cut in half. Look at the center then take the next outside ring out. You suddenly have a gap. Now drill 4 1/8" wholes and fill them with 4 1/16" studs and torque them down. The wheel/onion is going to eventually wobble off center when spun at high rates of speed. If that doesn't work for you...what happens when you hit a pot hole? You have those extra fractions of an inch that the wheel can shift. That is bad.

Those are just my thoughts on the subject.