Wheel spacers installed — 400 miles and one muddy trip later

[Jason Miller]

Fair questions, and you guys caught me on a couple things, so let me be straight instead of dodging.

Yeah — I'm affiliated with BONOSS. This was a real install, but I should've just said who I'm with in the first line instead of burying it. That's on me, and now that it's out I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

On the spacer vs adapter thing — you're right that in axle-speak the 6x139.7-to-6x139.7 unit with its own studs gets called an "adapter" by a lot of folks. BONOSS lists it as a "hub-centric wheel spacer" because it's the same bolt pattern, no pattern change. I'm not gonna die on that hill; call it whatever, the part's the same.

Guilty on the "one post and pushing a brand nobody's heard of" point. I'm new here, that's fair. But I'm sticking around this thread, not posting and ghosting. Ask me anything and I'll answer from this account.

On the aluminum fatigue point — that's a legit knock against cheap cast spacers, and I don't want to lump ours in with those. These are forged 6061-T6 billet, not cast. The studs are ISO grade 12.9 forged steel that went through a 2,000,000-cycle SGS life test without failing (tensile ≥1,220 MPa, proof load 121,000 N, hardness 392 HV). BONOSS has 66+ SGS/TÜV test reports on file — the cert page is here if you actually want to look: https://www.bonoss.com/bonoss-wheel-spacers-quality-certificated . I'm not asking anyone to take my word for it. And honestly I'd love to see real long-haul data from anybody running these things — that's the stuff that's actually useful to the next guy thinking about it.

I'm not going to argue from other accounts or bump this thread. If it's useful it'll stand on its own.

 

[ntsqd]

An important distinction to be made about the GM wheel spacer/adapter/thingies is that they are cast steel or cast iron.
The aftermarket such devices are aluminum. Aluminum has a significantly shorter fatigue life. Factor in that the typical spacer/adapter/thingie is a stress-riser nightmare (and there is no better way to design them) and you have two strikes against the common aftermarket spacer/adapter/thingie. When those aluminum spacer/adapter/thingies fail they fail like this:

400 miles means nothing. Come back with X-Ray inspection pictures in 10,000 miles.

I also find it interesting that the OP has exactly one post so far, and it is promoting the product of a company that I've never heard of but whose name frankly sounds like one of Amazon's vendors.

The part that I posted above does not appear to be a casting either. I stand by my comments about this design being a stress riser nightmare. You shouldn't need FEA to be able to predict this design failing exactly where the part above did fail. Making them from aluminum of any alloy other than 7075 (and possibly 2024) is insult to injury. The fatigue life of the more common aluminum alloys just isn't there. Neither of those negatives are unique to your specific parts, they're true of all of the similar parts on the market. Being a forging helps with strength, does almost nothing for fatigue life. The problem has never really been the studs, so their testing doesn't mean much.

 

[jamesroney]

The part that I posted above does not appear to be a casting either. I stand by my comments about this design being a stress riser nightmare. You shouldn't need FEA to be able to predict this design failing exactly where the part above did fail. Making them from aluminum of any alloy other than 7075 (and possibly 2024) is insult to injury. The fatigue life of the more common aluminum alloys just isn't there. Neither of those negatives are unique to your specific parts, they're true of all of the similar parts on the market. Being a forging helps with strength, does almost nothing for fatigue life. The problem has never really been the studs, so their testing doesn't mean much.

I didn't reply back, because I suspected that the OP is selling.

The Early Bronco does not lend itself to hub-centric front wheel adapters especially with the factory thick drum brake centers. I'm not even sure there's anywhere on the front for the hub-centric to register. The rear axle does have a hub protrusion on the factory 28 spline axles, but their index diameter is not the same as the front. The small brake rear is like 2.43", and the big drum rear is 2.88" , and the front hub OD is 3.40, and it's rough machined. So the notion that someone is putting hub-centric wheel adapters on an Early Bronco is just absurd.

Besides, the factory and aftermarket wheels are ALL 5x5.5 and lug centric. So who registers multi diameter hub centric adapters on a lug centric flanges, only to install lug centric wheels? The answer is "nobody."

And yes, of course your stress riser is an engineering FACT. It's not a debate. And any fool could determine that the conical lug seat at 60 degrees is going to push almost as hard to "split the hole" as it is to clamp the load. (So I guess we are a couple of fools...)

That being said, I have seen this mitigated with conical steel inserts at the lug interface. But even then...your argument for 7075 has even more merit. But as soon as he said "Forged 6061-T6 billet" all of my alarms went off. Nobody (other than aerospace) forges a 7 inch round billet in 6061. That would be a factory extruded shape. Pretty sure the round extrusions go all the way to 20 inch. That's when I realized I was in a commercial.

@ntsqd Thanks for posting engineering truth to marketing fiction.

 

[ntsqd]

I had a class in Jr. High that focused on propaganda in all of it's forms, including Marketing and politics. Oddly, most of my classmates hated having to take the class (it was required) but I thought it was great and it made me much more aware of the tactics being used. Some would likely say that it also made me a cynic.

 

[bmc69]

Still running the 1.5" and 2" billet steel 8-lug spacers on my '78 Bronco...40" Toyos. Lost count of how many years...

 

[ntsqd]

As I'm quite sure you're well aware, they're being steel is a huge difference. Any idea who made them?

 

[Broncobowsher]

6061 low cost aluminum that is often the choice for easy to machine. Most readilly available. Most any 'billet' trinket is made of this
7075 is harder to machine, but generally a better choice for structural aluminum bits.
And 100,000 more aluminum alloys if you really wanted to optimize the materials.

Steel is completely different. This is what you find on a 1-ton dually front end from the factory

My fun Aluminum vs. Steel find one day. On a flight and got a can of Coke. Cracked it open, tasted it. This is different, it tastes good. As in a Mexican Coke type of good. Read the can label. It was German and the can had an 'Fe' recycling logo on it. It was a steel can of Coke from Germany. The plane had obviously done an international flight and the beverage service was restocked with whatever was locally bottled. I pointed it out to the flight attendents and they scoured the cart while on break and kept a few for themselves and gave me an extra one for pointing it out to them. We all had a good go around of it.

 

[Shimmy]

6061 low cost aluminum that is often the choice for easy to machine. Most readilly available. Most any 'billet' trinket is made of this
7075 is harder to machine, but generally a better choice for structural aluminum bits.
And 100,000 more aluminum alloys if you really wanted to optimize the materials.

Steel is completely different. This is what you find on a 1-ton dually front end from the factory

My fun Aluminum vs. Steel find one day. On a flight and got a can of Coke. Cracked it open, tasted it. This is different, it tastes good. As in a Mexican Coke type of good. Read the can label. It was German and the can had an 'Fe' recycling logo on it. It was a steel can of Coke from Germany. The plane had obviously done an international flight and the beverage service was restocked with whatever was locally bottled. I pointed it out to the flight attendents and they scoured the cart while on break and kept a few for themselves and gave me an extra one for pointing it out to them. We all had a good go around of it.

beer from a bottle tastes way better than from a can

 

[SLOWnEASY]

I've always wondered is it the taste of the metal on the can to your lips or is it the taste of the beer inside the can or is there actually no difference? Like have you ever had a friend pour one of each into a glass while you weren't watching and then done a taste test?

Going back to ntsqds' post about his high school post. You gotta love marketing. I remember as a teenager when Coors long neck bottles came out and my friends dads were all raving about them. It made no sense to me why anybody would seek out long necks, but they did.

 

[ntsqd]

The head guy (owner?) at Sierra-Nevada Brewing was working with a doc over at UC Davis on beer in a can. Turns out it actually stays drinkable longer in the can than it does in a bottle - no matter what the color of the glass is. Given who S-N is, I doubt that they'd head that direction if there was a taste downside to beer in a can. I don't recall the details, perhaps they developed a coating for the cans that stopped the metal from influencing the taste.
That sums up what little I know about the situation. Since I can't drink it was informational only and I didn't read up on in depth.

 

[ntsqd]

lookit what we did, and we didn't even need @nvrstuk's help!
ROTFLOL........

 

[bmc69]

As I'm quite sure you're well aware, they're being steel is a huge difference. Any idea who made them?

I've forgotten...it happens. I'm 68..

 

[nvrstuk]

lookit what we did, and we didn't even need @nvrstuk's help!
ROTFLOL........

I"m still laughing...

 

[73azbronco]

the heavy jeep wheelers learned long ago, proper backspacing on rims solves all these problems. I can understand wanting to run a certain rim that is unobtainable