Am running 245 70 19.5 tires on the rear of my bucket truck, and they sit close enough to rub. Really need a tire this wide to not leave impressions on ground when driving across lawns. So am wondering where to find the 8 lug spacers that could gap out the wheels on rear axle.
TIA, Ronjon

 

Spacers are never a good idea.

The wheels on the 2001 F-550 are hub piloted, and the machined part of the hub that has the calibrated diameter for the piloting is only so wide... and any wheel that is outboard of that machined land is now on the tapered part of the hub, not the piloted part.

If your F-550 does NOT have aluminum wheels, and has steel on the outside as well as the inside, then you have the thickness of the aluminum wheel less the thickness of the outside steel wheel to play with, in terms of fitting spacers. But given that yours is a 2001, spacers will be much harder to come by, with the 8x225mm bolt pattern, which was only available for 5 years, whereas the 10x225mm bolt pattern has been available for the last 15 years, or three times as long, and in a more recent time period, and across several brands and product lines (the Sterling Bullet and the Dodge Ram and FCA's current Ram all also use the 10x225mm bolt pattern, along with International's LCF and another brand of truck whose name escapes me at the moment).

The aftermarket only tools up to make products that sell, and it is a safer bet making a spacer for a bolt pattern that is more likely to have customers, like the 10x225mm, than a bolt pattern from a decade and a half ago, that only was on the market for five years, for just one brand.

Will 245's really make that much of a difference over 225's? Considering that the 245 adds up to 20 lbs of additional unsprung weight per tire (depending on which brand and model tires are compared across sizes)... or 80 more lbs of unnecessary weight on the rear axle rolling over blades of grass. 20 lbs per tire is not that significant on a 13,000 lb truck, but is 20mm per tire?

Instead of getting spacers, why not get the proper width rims (6.75" minimum rim width) with a corresponding offset in order to properly handle the 245 tires you prefer, without mucking around with unsafe wheel spacers. On a bucket truck especially, which already concentrates enough load on the rear axle tubing to crack some axle housings. This was an issue back in 2001, where some utility companies had to replace axle housings (the innards were fine, just the banjo square tube housing had to be repaired or replaced, depending on the severity of the cracking, usually evidenced by gear oil seepage at the spring pad on top of and/or on the back side of the housing.

There are 6.75" wide 19.5" wheels with 8x225mm bolt patterns and the offset you need. They are made by Accuride and one other supplier. Southwest wheel in Texas sells them, and so does any given Ford dealer, as they were used on stripped chassis vehicles of the same model years.