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Long story but I have a set of replacement alloys second hand that are missing a pair of spigots. Oh they are for a van.
What's the wisdom? I am pretty sure that even though they are not load bearing its not smart to have that gap in the centre with just the bolts taking all the load. But I'm not a mechanical engineer so what do I know.
Yay or nay..
Nay, just buy some spigots.
they’re not load bearing, but they ensure the wheel is correctly centred. Without them it’s possible to (impossible not to) misalign the wheel and end up with a potentially dangerous wobble.
they’re not load bearing, but they ensure the wheel is correctly centred
Say what...
I think he means correctly centred before you do the nuts/bolts up.
So they're a locating device rather than load bearing as stated above. Get some spigots - will cost £5 on ebay
It's fine. They aren't load bearing, they're there to centre the wheels (source: couple of people who work for an OEM)
Do the nuts/bolts up bit at a time in a star pattern so it's correctly centered by the taper, and you'll be grand. Many people, including me, have done tens of thousands of miles and multiple track days like this with zero issue.
But as above, when spigot rings are so cheap and easily available, getting an order in for a set is usually pretty easy.
They are load bearing! The bolts are not to take the weight of the car/van, just to hold the rim on
Spigots are pennies, buy some.
If they were load bearing they wouldn’t be made out of plastic, think about it.
they aren’t essential but worth having for ease of use.
They will be load bearing if you don’t tighten the nuts properly.
Most of the load is taken by the friction between the face of the hub and the back of the rim.
Which is provided by the end load on the bolts. Hence the very high torque figures (think mine are 120Nm, 5 bolts)
The tapers/spheroids on the bolts/nuts provide some of the centring and the spigot the rest.
One very good reason not to paint/powdercoat the seats in the rim.
Depends, are they hub-centric or lug-centric wheels?
Plenty of cars have lug-centric wheels where the center bore goes nowhere near the hub flange.
True hub-centric wheels (that would absolutely need a spigot) have flat-faced nuts/bolts because the lugs do nothing to center the wheel.
A lot of modern cars have a mix of both, the center bore is mostly just to make your life easy when changing wheels, but the nuts / bolts themselves are tapered so the final locating is done by them.
Spigots are ordered. Was only going to run the van till they arrived. But I'll take everyone's advice and just wait.
Cheers