Bought a 996TT a couple of months ago. There was a lot of shake in the steering wheel and the previous owner mentioned balancing and said the tires may have a little flat spotting to them.

I had the front tires balanced at Discount Tire which eliminated about half the issue. I was fairly certain that the wheels were OK and had my son, a lead Nissan mechanic for a number of years, balance them again by going so far as rotating the tire on the wheel for the best balance. His work seemed to produce no real improvement.

My son mentioned that spacers can produce a number of issues and recommended I remove them. I then removed the two front aluminum spacers and magically I've got no shake, other than what I would consider normal feedback from the road surface. Problem solved.

I'm wondering if others have had this experience and ultimately traced it back to the spacers?

 

Most name brand hub and wheel centric spacers are fine. If they aren't hub/wheel centric you can have vibration problems.

 

I don't know the brand name of the spacers, but the previous owner was a Porsche Club of America instructor, and an engineer by trade. He modified the car with PSS9 coilovers and H&R springs, along with a GT2 clutch conversion. So, I doubt he bought the spacers on the cheap.

Maybe he got a bad set?

 

it's possible, but i've never witnessed it in person. Have a picture of them by any chance?

 

 

i ran 7x15 spacers for a few years on twists, lowered an inch or more. never an issue. i've never heard of spacers causing this.

 

They don't appear to be hubcentric. They should have a lip for the wheel to mount on.

http://www.ecstuning.com/marketing/P...r_ECS_WSKs.jpg

 

The lip makes sense, but wouldn't all the wheel bolts center everything? I guess if the spacer holes were oversized a little it wouldn't.

 

They'd leave room for margin, and these cars i've learned are very sensitive to that. Stock you'd be resting on the hub, not the lugs, same would go with proper spacers

 

For track use, with stock wheels, is there any advantage to using spacers?

 

umm, wider stance?

 

I had similar looking GMP spacers on my front wheels and had the exact same problem. Not matter what I did I couldn't get rid of the shake without removing the spacers. I now only run them in the rear. Totally smooth steering wheel.

 

Spacers are often not as big an issue as they are made out to be. The 930 came from the factory with (relatively large) spacers. Using spacers can even improve handling in some cases due the increased track width. In general, spacers are used more for looks than true performance gains in order to "fill out" the wheel wells.
As HRG mentioned, your spacers do not appear to be hub-centrc. And the lugs do not adequately locate the wheel to eliminate vibration.

 

Thanks for all the replies. Like everything, quality matters.