Its always bloody wheel fitment I have a nightmare with!

My dad and I have finally got my new wheels sorted on my wee Abarth 124 Spider.

I bought the new OZ wheels around about a year ago believe it or not, and have only just got around to fitting them, this has a great deal to do with the awful weather we had from last year, leading into this year what with all the rain and salt on the roads. Plus at the same time I had a set of Yellow Speed Racing coil overs to go on my car and wanted these fitting first.

As Bodyworx had done such a good job on both my VW Beetle, installing new springs and in doing the tracking I asked would they be able to fit the coil overs and then align the Abarth. The whole job was carried out for what I thought was a very reasonable price £200.

Abarth 124 Spider lowered

When I went to pick up my car Kelvin one of the mechanics explained that the front wheels were very and I mean very close to the front Brembo callipers. When he said close and we inspected it, you couldn't even get a credit card between the rim and the calliper.

Wheelbase Alloys who had supplied the wheels assured me the correct offset would be sent out and looking at the invoice the offset did match the standard wheels as I recall, something like an offset of 42. Thing is I think a more negative offset say 35 would have been a better option. Too late to send the wheels back, we had to look at other options and this was wheel spacers.


So upon reading up what other people were fitting I decided to purchase a set of H&R 18 mm TRAK spacers, I then recalled putting lower profile tyres on my car and larger 18 inch rims, the standard rims being 17's.I also opted for for 215 tyres instead of the standard 205's so started panicking that the 18 mm would be too wide and I would have to mess around with the camber on my car to prevent any rubbing. So I returned the 18 mm spacers and ordered some H&R 9mm hub centric spacers. These came with what they call shank or shaft nuts which allow the nuts to be put on to the standard wheel studs allowing more turns.

As I recall I could get about 7 to 8 turns using the provided Shank/Shaft nuts, however I could only get about 4 1/2 turns when using my tuner nuts.

  

Shaft Shank Nuts

   

H&R 9 mm wheel spacers, with incorrect studs

Well this is where more problems began. I did some online research on the Abarth 124 forums to try and find out info on extended wheel studs and the correct fitment, so length, thread pitch and spline size. Long story short after ordering various wheel studs on 3 separate occasions, ranging from 47mm to 63 mm they all came with the incorrect spline size of 13.1 mm. All the forums I visited definitely said the spline size was 13.1, simply not true. This size won't even fit past the shoulder of the stud into the hub.

My dad used a micrometre and after much searching we discovered Demon Tweeks had some  "Hub Buddies Mazda Wheel Stud 12.82mm Spline Diameter 73mm Long Under Head Rear/Front", so I ordered 16 x of these and when they arrived we cautiously cut one stud down to around 51mm so that it would fit without removing the rear hub and gently pulled it into the hub. We then test fitted a wheel with the disc back on and the H&R spacer fitted and managed to get 10 turns on the tuner nut.

Following this my dad cut all the wheel studs to 51mm and we used a burr tool from Machine Mart to finish off the end of the stud threads.

  

Hub Buddies 12.82 spline 73mm long M12 x 1.5

I am now pleased to say my new wheels are fitted and look great with no catching or rubbing issues and my car is sitting pretty.

Studs pulled in an cut to length plus burred ends

Only one other thing that has really pissed me off whilst my car has been in the back yard with our gates closed, whilst awaiting getting sorted, my bonnet has been dented yet again in exactly the same place as last time, so that will be another £120 to get it sorted.


Once I am back to work I will restart saving as I have other mods planned, just at the moment I am having to try and work around this poxy illness I have been diagnosed with and its been difficult and really debilitating, Anyhoo that's another story.

Hopefully get out soon and get some shots of the wee Abarth to post when I get her cleaned and dent free.