Our Yaris gets a wider stance

Before 10mm spacer

After 10mm spacer

Yesterday I installed my Penguin Garage 10mm rear hub spacers onto the Yaris. More than anything for me, this is an aesthetic thing. In stock form, the Yaris' front track is wider than the rear and it can look a bit odd. With the 10mm rear spacer ($79.95 from Micro Image), it evens things out.

On the left is the "before" photo, the right, the after. As you can see, the wheel pokes out a bit more from the fender. It's nothing radical, but the car's stance looks noticeably better ... even if my photos don't make it look that way.

Installation is straight forward, and a how-to can be found on Yarisworld.com. Just take the wheel off, then the rear drum off, unplug your ABS sensor, remove four 14mm bolts, smear the included anti-corrosion gel on the spacers, sandwich the new spacers between the axle and the drum, install new bolts, and you're done.

OK, so in theory it's that easy. However, my car has about five years of road grime and a bit of corrosion in the hub area. Therefore, the spacers didn't just slip onto the hubs. Instead, I  took a wire brush to clean off the rust, and then needed to essentially do the install twice on each side; once to set the spacer in place, and a second time to torque them down. It took longer than I expected, but still was easy. Owners of newer Yaris models likely won't have to worry as much.

Since the spacers are only 10mm and my wheels have a 40mm offset (and I'm running 195mm wide tires), there likely won't be any rubbing. The Penguin Garage spacers do come with some camber shims if you'd need them.