I think I may have made the mistake of getting the standard pentagram star rims that come with the mini. The more and more I see the white painted fancier ones, the more I think I should have gotten those. They look so much nicer.

Are there increased maintainance problems with the white painted rims? It seems like they would be easier to repair if you scratch them as one can sand + polish the area and apply touch up paint. I think perhaps I might want to buy those eventually. Not sure the expense might be too great.

I went with the standard ones as they seemed like the easiest to keep clean.

 

If you like washing your rims every few days, get the white ones.

 

White and silver rims get disgustingly dirty very quickly with the stock brake pads. I just replaced mine with non-stockers and the wheels have been cleaner longer.

 

Your not kidding! These brake pads shed like nuts! I just ruined a microfiber towel the other day by cleaning off the break dust.

As for changing the breaks I don't know enough about car mods yet to think about this yet but thats good to know this.

As for liking to wash the rims... Well who does but once the weather gets habitable again I'm going to zaino the whole auto and then proceed to wash the car every weekend so, this is not a problem.

 

Waxing your wheels (Griot's Paint Sealant, Prima Banana Gloss or Hydro, etc.) makes it much easier to wash off brake dust. However, this does nothing to reduce the amount of brake dust shed by the OEM pads - this is simply a BMW trait, shared with all BMW vehicles. The OEM pads stop well, but dust amazingingly. The only solution is to switch to less dust-intensive pads, such as Carbotech or Hawk.

 

Thats very good to know. I'll certainly use Zaino on the rims when I can.

I've never noticed such brake dust before in any other car but thats probably because this if the first car I've owned that has proper rims which fully expose the brake system.

dusty breaks
dusty brakes