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machining adapters and wheel bolts?


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Story goes:

I bought a pair of 20mm adaptors from a guy on here which were supposed to arrive with bolts.

They did come with bolts, but none were wheel bolts and there wasn't even 10 of them. Just a collection of random bolts quickly painted silver.

The guy wasn't very helpful at all and I was let to sort something out 2days before edition.

So we cut the standard vw wheel bolts to the head would sit flush. Pretty quick job but it worked.

Now my question is, I need to take about 3mm off the adapters to get the fronts sitting how I want them. The 3mm will be coming off the back of the adapter. So will 3mm need to come off the bolts to match or will there plently room in the hub?

I've had the problem where the wheel bolts were too long before and the wheels was wobbly and I don't want that with adapters.

Thanks

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quick ghetto check - A - poke screwdriver shaft through bolt hole till it hits the abs ring,check this against a bolt poking through the adaptor - B

if A is smaller than B your bolts will foul

ALSO - put a bolt in the wheel while it is off the car. Look at the rear off the wheel where the bolt pokes through and measure if that is less than 17mm as well....I know when I shaved my passat adaptors to 15mm I had to take three threads(at 1.5mm pitch=>4.5mm)off the end of the actual wheel bolts as well so that the bolts holding the wheel to the adaptor dont bottom out on the hub as well

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It may be the back off the adaptor but that just gets your bolts closer to the abs rings and your wheel bolts close to bottoming out. Whatever side you machine reduces the amount of meat in the adaptor which increases the chance of your wheel bolts bottoming out on the hub,

Im only going on my attempts to get mega low porsche fitment wheels on my old car and taking your adaptors down to 17mm then depending on the depth of the base of the bolt seat your original M14 vw bolts will bottom out on the hub when you tighten the wheels up...

If you machine from the rear theres the chance both sets of bolts(adaptor to hub and wheel to adaptor)will need shortening.

Are you getting the rear machined as you think its an easier cheaper option as its just a flat skim?

Dont worry about the spigot on the face side as any machine shop will be able to leave this then you can easily get 5mm shorter wheel bolts from any local wheel shop rather than shortening 20 bolts ;)

edit....after writing all that :-Take one of the bolts out of your wheels and bolt the adaptor to the new wheels,spin the wheel round and check how close to the rear face of the adaptor the bolt is.....

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I can't machine the front of the adapter because there not much of the bolt head anyway, so taking 3mm off will make it a nightmare tightening them and taking them out.

There's 5mm space on the back where the steel insert starts. So if I take 3mm off its not going to touch the insert (H&R adapters)

I've got a spare front hub. So I could bolt the wheel to that and see?

So I need to see how much thread is sticking out of the back? How much is considered safe?

Cheers

Sorry about all the questions but I need to get this right first time

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Got a pic of what you mean by allen key bolts.

There's no pics of them for h&r. When I emailed them for bolts they didn't mention them either. But was going to cost £100 for 10 bolts due to bank transfer costs!

I ran them for 2months as them are with half height head bolts (me and my mate cut standard vw bolts due to not getting them when I got the adaps).

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sticking out the back of the hubs it wont,theres generally 23-25mm from the face of the disc to the abs ring.

But running an adaptor below 20mm then you are close to a factory M14 bolt bottoming out on the hubface when you bolt the wheel on which is kinda why ive been saying

'bolt an adaptor to a wheel'

just as a trial...you can easily check from checking the rear of that how much you can skim the adaptor down before you need shorter bolts as you really dont want to bottom out a bolt on the hub if you like your adaptors....

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see if my maths is correct

the distance in the hub i measured at about 27mm

A standard VW wheel bolt stick out of the back of a wheel by 22mm

Leaving 5mm free space in the hub

If i take 3mm off the adapter if brings the bolt thread length to now 25mm? leaving 2mm free speace in the hub

meaning I dont have ot get the bolts machined down?

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