Wheel spacers on stock wheels

[Art Vandelay]

I'm having clearance problems with front coilovers and stock wheels/tires, and it's requiring me to run 1/4" spacers up front to keep the lower spring perch from rubbing the tires. I don't know how to determine whether or not I need longer wheel studs, and if I do need them, which ones do I need. Somewhere on MM's website, it says that you need 6 full turns of lug nut engagement, and mine get to be finger tight at about 5 1/2 turns, so I'm probably still a bit short overall. There is also a rule of thumb (not sure how true it is) that the depth of your lug nut engagement should be equal or greater than the diameter of the stud, and I am short on that metric.

I think the car is fine to drive around casually, but I don't want to be on the margins with this. What are the specs of the stock studs, and is there anything I need to look out for if I decide to change them? The studs that MM sells say they require open end lug nuts, but I don't know why that would be the case. I will be using stock SVO lug nuts.

My other alternative here is to slot a mounting hole in the strut to angle the top of the tire away from the strut. The MM struts are already slightly slotted, I don't have any major concerns here, but I want to keep it to a minimum, if I do it at all.

The car is stuck on jack stands during prime driving season until I figure out where to go with this.

[MikeFleming]

You can indeed slot the struts and find another way to compensate for the camber change. There some posts on how I did this to the KONI DA Fox struts on the Red Baron.

On the thread engagement "standards":
for non-critical threads - AT LEAST one full diameter of thread engagement
For critical or high-load applications: 1.5 to 2.0 x diameter thread engagement.

Personally I would want at least 1.5 x dia on wheel studs and 2x on main bolts, head bolts, etc.

The stock studs are 1/2-20 thread. You want between 0.5 and 0.75" of thread engagement at finger tight. This is not a place to have a failure, imho.

Most aftermarket longer studs are WAAAAY long, like 3" and the nut must be open-ended so the stud can stick out - need a deep socket to install them. Or you get to custom-shorten 20 studs to work exactly as you need. As we say "Flavor to taste".

[Art Vandelay]

World's slowest mechanic checking in.

Thanks for the input, Mike.

I slotted out the strut hole a bit, and now I'm just barely clearing on the driver side, and just barely not clearing on the passenger side. I think I want to leave it there for now, and combine that effort with smaller 1/8" wheel spacers. I'm also long overdue for new tires, and that may change the clearance just a bit, so I'll re-evaluate when all that is done.