no you dont need them.

yes you should use them.

different cars and wheels respond differently not not having them fitted. stop being tight

Where was he being tight? He was asking where the best place to get one from was.....

Olly to the rescue lol.

ye, I'm not tight...i understand they are important, it was just the case i have one missing on the front so, i wanted to know whether it was important i got a replacement and where i could get them from.

I feel I have learnt lots from this thread

Always wondered what spigot rings did. And know I know how wobble bolts work as i'd never seen any before.

The tapered bit moves around iirc....

think, there holding about 1 tonne of wieght, add G's to that, can be 3 tonnes,

£4 or potential death?

Ha ha ha ha ha nope.

They hold NO weight AT ALL. You really think a 30p (manufacture cost) piece of plastic is going to support the weight of a car? It it really was taking all the load yo mentioned it would be crushed in a matter of seconds. Also the clearance tolerance of spigots is rubbish, they're never tight enough to provide any real support.

There sole purpose is to allow the wheel to sit centrally so when you tighten up the bolts it's on square and the bolts go in straight. The bolts also do not support the weight of the vehicle, they provide lateral force clamping the wheel to the hub surface. The weight of the car is supported through the frictional force of the wheel and hub interface which is created through the tightening of the wheel bolts.

There are many road going vehilces (like Type 2 VW vans and classic minis) that do not centre the wheel using the hub but do so using the wheel bolts. You don't see them losing wheels every day do you?

I used to have a link that explained all this far better than me and with diagrams but I'm damned if I can find it today.

Anyhoo I know of a couple of race cars (one of which is factory prepped by BMW) and my own track car that run without spigot rings and even under those kinds of stresses I'm yet to lose a wheel or suffer a sheared bolt.

Nick

Thank god! , someone to back the intelligent up against the miss-led, iv been saying this for ages and all you get is the same shit.

"NOO you need them!, they take the weight of the car!" and

"your wheels are not secure then!"

so you think that your wheels move when there torqued up? , enough so that the inside bore of the wheel touches the hub centre?

All they do is make sure that your wheel is centred correctly before tightening up, Its a good idea to use them , but not a BAD idea if you dont.

Max

I think the thing is there's lots of opinions on the internet and not enough people looking into things with proper research

on a given subject. It's to easy to ask the "experts" on a forum and take their word for gospel. It's worse on forums like this where the average age is very low due to the fact the car in questions is mostly driven by new drivers before moving onto something more powerful. Being an old git a couple of weeks shy of his 32nd birthday I've been working on and modding cars before some the peeps on here we're a twinkle in their daddies eyes. Back then there was no internet so you had to go the library or book shop and get hold of books on engineering and speak to real engineers in their garages to find out how to do things correctly. If none of that was available you had to fall back on your school physics and think long and hard over what you were doing and how you could make sure it was right.

I'm not dissing any members on here though as we're all car enthusiasts and I'm glad that kids are still willing to get heir hands dirty and muck about in the cold and wet with their cars to mod them or just to keep them going. Far too many people these days treat cars as a disposable items and I find that sad. It's th esame with so many items these days like TV's and Car Radios. No one bothers to try and fix them any more but just chucks them away and buys a new one. More people should take stuff apart, figure out what's wrong and try and fix it yourself, you gainm a huge amount of satisfaction when you fix something.

Bloody hell I sound like Victor Meldrew, I'm off for a spliff and listen to some RATM to get me in the christmas spirit, ha ha.

nick

amen!

And just to add spigots are not essential they are handy if you don't have a torque wrench butyou can get one off eBay for just over £20 and if you go thru 10 sets of wheels on your first few cars (which I know many of you do lol) it's a gr8 investment and a money saver! A correctly torqued up wheel without spigots is better than a badly fitted wheel with spigots IMO anyways! Simple physics lol