Just a heads up and a warning to everyone running spacers. While driving 70 mph on the interstate I felt 2 sudden dropping banging crashes. This was a result of the spacer lugs on my rear driver side wheel all coming off. Luckily I was able to maintain control and make it to the side of the interstate while watching my wheel, tire, and spacer roll on ahead. I followed the instructions for installation of the spacers, used the loctite and lugs provided, and pulled the wheels off at 3 days and 3 months to retorque to the specified numbers. The story is not all negative because after dragging down the interstate for around 500 feet trying to stop and get to the side all on asphalt all on my shock mount all I can say is WOW. Jeep built these things strong. The shock mount took all of the abuse and kept all the other parts off of the road and I am proud to say nothing was damaged except the spacer, the wheel that came off becuase of said spacer, and the front passenger tire that got ground into 4 different flat spots. Jeep did a great job and I am in no way saying that the spacer manufacturer did anything wrong and that is why I am not including their name in this post. This was an accident and hopefully something that is very very rare and happens to noone else. I will be contacting the manufacturer of the spacers just to let them know what happened and see if they are willing to help me fix the results, and I will keep everyone posted on the results. Just some advice to those of you running spacers dont ever get comfortable check them constantly and be careful, this could have been a disaster luckily a higher power was on my side looking out for me. So knock on wood, then check and re-tighten your spacers, then knock on wood again. Good luck and be safe everyone.
Justin

 

What type of spacer? Bet they werent Spidertrax.

 

I do have pictures but I really don't want it to seem that I am in any way trying to put any blame on the manufacturer and the spacers are visible in the pictures. This truly was an accident, but an accident that was caused by the spacer or the lug nuts on the spacer that were supplied by the manufacturer. As long as it is out there and clear that I am in no way trying to blame this on the manufacturer I will say that they are the 1.5" spidertrax spacers indeed and when I get my access to my camera tomorrow I will post the pics. Spidertrax is a great company with a great track record and great customer support and service that I would absolutely buy from again, this was an accident. The great thing is how solid jeep built our vehicles that my shock mount was able to take all the punishment, hold up fine, and protect all of the more vulnerable parts underneath. Nothing was damaged not even the disk brake.

 

WOW! I'd say you were pretty lucky! How often does these things fail? I actually ran 2" spacers between the rear tires of my Dodge 1 ton Ram DRW so I could fit 35x12.50's. I always was iffy with them, but after a handful of truck pulls and a couple tug-a-truck events they held up. Over 3 years and 200k miles my confidence grew with them, and these were an off brand. I was thinking about tossing some on the JK for some extra width, might reconsider now...

 

Damn bad luck there. Ive been running the same for over 3 yrs with no issues. Even the best have duds from time to time.

 

Just to be clear it was the lug nuts that backed off, I tightened them according to the instructions retorqued them as instructed and even checked them randomly here and there. The provided spacer lug nuts are where the problem happened not the studs and spacer lugs all backed off and the wheel, tire, and spacer all came off and continued rolling leaving just the jeep studs left, of course damaged severely.
Justin

 

I made this negative a positive luckily no repair bills thanks to the shock mount so I only had to replace the tires and wheels, now I have proper backspacing, killer xd series matte black 17X9 wheels, and nitto trail grapplers 35x12.50's. But if I didn't have that option I would run the spidertrax spacers again without hesitation, except for the fact that I would check those spacer lugs constantly.

 

How long and how many miles did you run them? I've been running mine for a year/6k miles with the same tires as yours but with 20" rims.

 

If you re-torque a nut that has red Loctite in the threads you can crack the brittle red Loctite and defeats the purpose of it. I never re-torque a nut if I applied red Loctite.

Grade 5 studs???

 

What kind of torque wrench do you have?