what are your opinions on wheel spacers? i want a little more aggressive stance  on the beast, so i was thinking about wheel spacers. i also believe i have read that they help with ride quality because it puts more leverage on everything... not quite sure...

http://www.lowrangeoffroad.com/samaxles.htm

these are to 2 wheel spacers that i have found, and just wondering what your guys thoughts and opinions are, is it worth it? are they safe, legal? etc. etc?

I run the 1" wheel spacers on my Tracker, and used to have the 1.5" but gave those to a buddy with a Samurai as they were a little to wide and made the tires rub to much on the back of the wheel wells.

You can also pick up old Ford wheel spacers, but you will have to change your lug nuts to standard instead of metric.  Just make sure they are the 5 on 5.5 pattern.

If you need a couple of inches of extra width, but don't want to buy offset rims they are a great and easy way to do it.  They will cause a bit of extra strain on your bearings and it's not really recommended you go over 1.5".  If you need wider then that you should look at swapping to wider axles.

I've run wheels apacers without any problems. The one piece machined spacers are the best, I personally wouldn't run the cast ones with the stud extensions. However if you shop around you may find that steel rims with more offset aren't a lot more expensive.

so they are beneficial, to a point, but put extra stress on the bearings. so is there anything i can do to eleviate that stress (aside from leaving the spacers off)? and i am assuming the above is true for both a samurai and a tracker?

I have run 1" spacers all around my Sammi for years with out any bearing issues, if you wan't a little more width they work great, and they keep the lugs of my Swampers out of the front leafs when steering all the way to lock.
Norcal

I have run 1.5" spacers on my 4dr. Sidekick for 2 years now with no problems. They do make it look way more aggresive but they also put the tires closer to the inner fenders when turning. I would not go any bigger than 1.5". Make sure you get the 5 on 5.5 and the inner hole big enough for the Sidekicks.

I'm running the spidertrax 1" on my XL-7. I've run 1.5" spacers on my GV before that. They put the same amount of extra stress and any wheel with a higher offset than stock, and I haven't seen too many people complain about bearing stress when running wheels, so I wouldn't worry about the spacers. Just make sure you get quality spacers and you will have no issues.