If you’ve ever removed your motorcycle’s wheels, you’ll know that it’s a job that would be much easier if we had three arms, not two.
Well, perhaps removing the wheel can be done with two, but it’s tricky to get everything in place, up to the right level and held there while you locate the axle.
I’ve always been aided by my foot (holding the rear wheel at the right height) or a block of wood if I have one to hand. And on more than one occasion, I’ve been at the point where I can slide the axle into place and one of the wheel spacers has dropped out.
That’s where captive wheel spacers come in handy. I’ll explain why below.
What are motorcycle captive wheel spacers?
They are pretty much as described. Your motorcycle’s wheels come with spacers, which are solid bits of machined metal, designed to fit into the wheel and fill in the gap between the wheel and the swingarm.
There’s a spacer (usually) on each side of the wheel when it comes to the rear wheel. On Japanese bikes there tend to be two at the front too. On bikes with single-sided swingarms they don’t tend to have (or need them) and on some german bikes, there’s only one on the front wheel, which means it’s not actually too tricky to get that all back into place.
So back to the captive spacers. What are they and why do you need them? Your OEM wheel spacers are unlikely to be captive. Sometimes they sit flush to the wheel and don’t locate into the rim itself. On some bikes you have multiple spacers (plates) on one side, making it tricky to hold all of this in place (especially on the rear wheel) as you try to loop the chain back on to the sprocket, line up the rear caliper, keep the spacers in place, lift the wheel to the right height and locate the spindle. It’s a workout!
I’ve seen countless wheel spacers go rolling across a pit garage floor on a trackday, being chased by a pi$$ed-off owner.
A captive spacer locates inside the rim. There’s only one on each side of the wheel. Once they’re fitted, you can pretty much turn the rim on its side and the spacers won’t slide out.
As you can imagine, they make wheel location and fitting so much easier because you have one less thing to worry about. And the spacers are probably THE trickiest thing to manage when you’re re-fitting a wheel.
Suddenly two hands feels like more than enough to remove and refit your wheels.
RaceReady produce a range of quality captive spacers. From what I can see these are all for sportsbikes or performance bike you’re likely to use on track. They sell full kits for bikes where you can fit them to front and rear wheels and they also sell half-kits for front-wheel-only fitments (pretty much Ducati where you don’t need them for the rear wheel).
These are the Gucci motorcycle spacer brand. Spider kit can be seen on MotoGP and WSBK bikes. Good quality but pricey. Chances are whatever bike they produce them for, these have been tested at world level. So you know they’re proven.
Do you need captive spacers?
Firstly, it’s important to note that they’re only made from a small range of bikes.
These are often track bikes, as these are the most likely to require frequent wheel changes. If you have an adventure bike, I can see the benefit of captive spacers, as I wouldn’t want to be faffing around replacing an inner tube in the middle of nowhere and trying to fiddle around with spacers. My tip would be to get a bike like a BMW GS that has a single-sided rear wheel, is tubeless and has a simple front wheel with only one spacer!
If your bike has a single-sided swingarm at the rear, you don’t need captive spacers as the wheel locates onto the hub (often with a spacer there to ensure a simple fit).
If you have a road bike and you don’t change the tyres yourself, the only benefit of captive spacers is to your tyre fitter, who will have a slightly easier time fitting your wheels. However, if you’re fitting wheels day in day out, with the right tools and a bench that lifts the bike up to eye level, the whole wheel fitting process is a lot easier.
Are captive spacers legal?
Fitting captive spacers to your bike won’t make it illegal or make it fail the MOT (it’s highly unlikely an MOT tester would spot them anyway).
In the car world, spacers are used in a different way. They widen the track of the car. It’s sometimes referred to as ‘stance’. This makes the wheels side further out (usually 20mm or so), which some modified car owners like, as it also give the impression the car is wider and sits lower. However they can adversely affect handling and in some cases, can mean the edge of the tyre rubs the wheel arch when the suspension compresses. This will likely be spotted when it comes to an MOT and could well be illegal, depending on the fitment.
Back to the world of motorcycles – captive spacers just make the tricky job of fitting wheels that bit easier.