Welcome to FYIFORD.

Seems to me if the Wilwoods space the front wheels out .25" farther, you would want the deeper backspacing up in the front so the tires will clear the fenders.

Will you be using the 1/2" wheel spacers in front or rear?  Adding a spacer effectively REDUCES backspacing.  A 16x7 wheel with 4.5" backspacing and a 1/2" spacer effectively has 4" backspacing.

Can you be more specific as to which one gets the spacers and exactly what you are trying to accomplish? 

A little different backspacing won't hurt anything except maybe causing a rub problem.  Taken to extreme, too much backspacing up front can cause rub on the upper control arm as well as scrub radius issues in steering.

blue32-20 wrote:

Thanks for the reply. The 16x7 wheels I want to use have a 5 inch backspace. Since the Wilwood kit moves the front hubs 0.25" out from stock, I figured the half inch wheel spacers I plan to use would effectively give me 4.25" backspace up front. I wanted to use the same 0.5" spacers in the rear, which, with the 5 inch backspace 16x7, would make my rear wheel backspace 4.5". Would that difference of 0.25" between the front and rear be a problem?

J.C.

 I don't know if this will help, but I have Wilwood front brakes in my '66. 16x7 wheels with 5" BS.  I had to use a half inch spacer with the steel shim that came with the kit.  Otherwise the wheel will not fit.  The caliper rubs on the inside of the wheel.  I also got longer studs for the front as my wheels are pretty thick.

In the rear, I just did the same thing for symmetry.  The SSBC rear disks fit just fine.  When I mounted the rear wheels without the spacers I did not like the look.  They looked too far into the wheel well.