Standard & High Misalignment Spacers
What’s a misalignment spacer? What’s the difference between standard and high misalignment spacers? Which spacer will give me the most misalignment? All questions we’ve received about misalignment spacers here at Barnes4wd. Here’s The Average Joes answer to all those questions, and some insight on what I’ve learned thus far. Hold on it’s about to get Spacey, and I’m not talking about Kevin.
With misalignment spacers the name of the game is increasing range of motion! A heim joints itself allows for a large range of motion. The limiting factor of a Heim Joints range of motion is the bracketry used for mounting the heim joint. In the picture below the heim joint without any spacers hits the bracketry at 5.5 degrees.
Many applications that need heim joints often require a larger range of motion. To help achieve a greater range of motion. A spacer will be needed. A standard misalignment spacer can help you achieve this.
A standard misalignment spacer will sit directly over the spherical bearing of a heim joint. The standard misalignment spacer will keep the bolt hole size the same as the heim. For example when running a 7/8 -3/4 heim joint. The threaded shank is 7/8 and the bolt hole size will be ¾. When using a standard ¾ misalignment spacer the ¾ bolt hole remains ¾.
Here is a picture of the misalignment achieved when using a standard misalignment spacer.
As you can see the limiting factor now becomes the misalignment spacers themselves. Using this setup the heim achieves a greater range of motion and bottoms out a 12.2 degrees.
Need more misalignment still? Then a High Misalignment Spacer is what you’re looking for. High Misalignment Spacers offer an even greater range of motion, than our standard misalignment spacers. A key difference over the standard misalignment spacer is a High Misalignment spacer will insert into the spherical bearing of the heim joint. Whereas the Standard Misalignment spacer sets on top of the bearing. Inserting a High Misalignment spacer will step the bolt hole size of your heim down. We do offer different options for bolt hole sizes.
Let’s take for example our 7/8 – ¾ heim joint. With a high misalignment spacer we can select a ¾-5/8 spacer. The ¾ end of the spacer will insert into the heim effectively taking the bolt hole size down to 5/8.
Here is a heim joint with high misalignment spacers.
This joint is achieving 28.5 degrees of misalignment before bottoming out. A drastic difference from our 1st example with no misalignment at all.
Misalignment joints be it Standard or High are a great inexpensive way of getting the most out of your heim joints.