Tire clearance

[Mike92STX]

I'm tired of checking and replacing wheel bearings. I bought the truck with 6" of frame lift 2or 3 " of body lift, cutout fenders with flares. I have 35x12.5x15 BFG KM2s the wheels are 15x8 and I measured the back space last week to be 3.5. It also has 2.5" spacers. I asked a tire and wheel sales guy and he said I can't get less back space unless they are special order. I checked the clearance with out the spacers and the tires rub some with wheels turned all the way.
I have torqued the outside spindle nut to as close to 200 ft lb as I can get ,wrench only goes to 140. My son found some smaller spacers on line and I'm considering them because I don't need 2.5" the other ones are 1.5". Any body have any better suggestions?

The truck is a 1992 STX,4.0 . I switched the front and back differentials from a 327 to 376 from a 93 junk yard so the back is 2" wider than it was before.

 

[bigmark303]

Its just the nature of the beast for the TTB front end wheel bearings and tires/offset so far from factory.

I kept the factory wheels and ran 33x10.50 and 35x10.50 tires just to avoid the extra stress on wheel bearings from extreme offset and wide tires. Didnt help much. With 33x10.50 I got away with a little more than with 35x10.50 but still ate wheel bearings in quick time.

SAS swap or drop in tire size and get closer to or a factory wheel again.

 

[4x4junkie]

The problem is the spacers. As said, having the tire out that far is too much leverage for the bearings.

If the tires are rubbing w/o spacers, I'd say either trim the fenders a bit or swap down a size on the tires.