Hi Folks,


I'm asking this because it seems that our Minis are getting bigger and bigger rims, they plunked huge 17 inchers on my Justa Cooper when much larger cars customarily get smaller and lighter weight wheels.


Sure, I love the flashy looks it gives the car - making it look high end and classy. But is that what these cars are all about? Or does performance still mean something in the world of Minis?


Here is a brief text where folks in the Italian Abarth forums are bringing this very issue into the foreground - their own rides are suffering from issues due to the move to 17 and even 18 inchers causing them to do some serious soul searching and wondering if they shouldn't adjust their aesthetic tastes to correspond more closely with what makes real world performance.



So what I'm getting to is why don't we attack head on what Mini doesn't seem ready to do. Instead of buying expensive options of heavy large rims, why not find a good power buy group purchase source for smaller very light weight rims which still look good and also promise to deliver better handling as well as quicker acceleration > anyone for a Sports Ride?


I can attest to the advantage of small rims, having owned a police pursuit vehicle with 15 inch alloys which blew everything away. Smaller wheels will reduce top speed and change the car's subjective gearing at a given speed, sort of like changing a rear axle ratio on a rear drive car. They will also potentially reduce your gas mileage on highway cruising the given rpms for the same speed being higher. But in city traffic they will save you gas because you'll hop effortlessly to speed from a red light without needing to punch the gas pedal nearly as hard.


Lets remember that there would be a couple of things to do to make this happen. First it would be necessary to make genuine gains in rim weight. Second to avoid heavy run flats. Third to stick to low profile tires to not only gain in weight but not lose sidewall rigidity while at the same time reducing the total wheel diameter for a smaller rotating mass meaning more effective torque transmission with less torque loss.


The drawbacks are that either you'd need to use GPS to know your real speed or flash the car's computer to correct for the new dimensions and adjust the discrete speedometer towering above your dashboard. Also it means that you'll probably not ever want to go back to bigger rims again, making the investment in pricey 17" or larger sets a poor investment. This I can confirm because after dropping in a 400hp crate engine into that police car, I had the hardest time accepting to go up to 16 inch wheels to fit dual caliper performance brakes.


So if any of you here have had experience with lightweight rims, say 15 inchers with low profile tires on your Mini, please give us a heads up! All suggestions of nice looking but especially LIGHT WEIGHT smaller rims would be more than welcome, and also suggestions of smaller sized low profile performance tires which are hard to come by. For example the smallest Asymmetrical Bridgestone BA50A made to fit a Mini are 16 inches. Ouch~


CB

 

Good intentions, with a slight flaw in your thinking.

How are we to reduce wheel size to 15" and still retain our factory stock brakes!

 

You touched on one problem toward the end of your post, larger brakes require larger wheels.....my understanding is that 15's won't clear the calipers on my Clubman S.

I'm also all for getting back to reality on rim size.....nothing looks more ridiculous to me than a 60's era car with 18 or 20" wheels and ultra low profile tires.

The E-Type in my sig has 15's on it...

 

There are many autocrossers who use 15" wheels for the reasons you describe.

As a side note. There are 17" aftermarket wheel options which are quite light i.e. sub 15lbs. They aren't for everybody, usually because of the price, but they do exist.

 

There are some seriously light rims if your prepared to pay for them!

I have a couple sets of Carbon fibre rims with Magnalium centres in 17" and they weigh under 5 kilos each!

 

I like that line of thinking, but some compromises are apparently necessary in minimizing ugly unsprung rotating mass.

The 7X16" Enkei Racing RPR1 wheel for the MINI weighs 13.7# and comes in several finishes for $219 each at Tire Rack. I've seen several at autocrosses and like the look too. They recommend the OEM tire size for those wheels.

My 1964 Mini Cooper 1275S came with 10" wheels, so Minis were born with small wheels. I think the S had about 75 hp then, so it would struggle hard to turn the big OEM wheels and tires on new MINIs.

 

Later Mini's had no more HP than your '64 and they came with 12 or even 13" wheels. That said, they don't handle or drive the same as the cars with the 10 inchers either.....

 

I tried to put 15" Konig Feathers on my car, but the wheel shop screwed it up. One wheel had different sized bolt holes than the other 3, and they couldn't figure out how to mount them without rubbing on the ball joint, etc. They had my car hostage and i needed something so I ended up buying a set of Mille Miglias 16s. My next set of wheels will be 15" for sure.. my Justa's brakes will fit just fine.

 

Just another reason I run 16s and won't run any bigger. I like a car with some rubber under it, rather than a couple of rubber bands wrapped around a huge wheel. Guess I'm old skool...I personally think a MINI with 16s (or even 15s) has more of a nostalgia look to it...but it's just my own opinion and preference.

 

15" Konig Rewinds were always my favorite.

 

Hi czar,


This may be a case where more is less. My post omitted to mention that I had a Justa Cooper that came with factory 17 inchers. This seemed large because I was annoyed when my new Mustang GT couldn't be ordered with smaller than 17" rims for 300+hp since I found that the same car in V6 form was nice with 16s. The Cooper has less than half the horsepower and torque and the same unsprung mass for a much lighter car.


Unless they slipped the beefier sports brakes into the Camden edition Justas it would appear that one could "breathe new life" into a 120hp car. Mind you that is a lot more oomph than the original mini's used to have, and if the stock brakes are meant to stop the car with bigger wheels they'll only work better with less wheel weight and centrifugal force to slow down.


CB

 

Hi MINI Dave,


That's a nice Jaguar, if not the nicest ever. A friend used to take me around in his inline 6 cylinder which he lauded as a better balanced car than the more powerful V-12, he's gone now but he had bought it new and it was his treasure which he didn't pamper but instead drove raucously down French country roads with farmland zipping past you in an incredible symphony of British racing fury. I can't recall but I figure his wire wheels were 15 inchers also given that this was about as huge and wheels got back when car makers applied the basic laws of physics before bending them to marketing madness.


Whether 15 inchers will or will not clear the Calipers on your Clubman S depends on the rim size but also on the pattern of metal shaping surrounding the hub. Some might even when most won't depending on how big your discs and calipers are. Only a wheel shop would be able to sort this out for, testing different rims on your car. Or you could wait until another forum member sorts this out for the rest of us, isolating one or several candidates for such a task.


If it won't add much more weight I wouldn't mind losing a touch of that golden ratio, sacrificing some handling agility to better braking by upgrading to Cooper S brakes, but what I don't find convincing is sacrificing agility and acceleration to look cool to others walking down the street or driving by who don't care even a smidgen. Impressing others by not knowing how to properly equip my car isn't a reference.


The reason I wanted larger brakes on the other car is because it is way heavier than a Mini and has a 400hp natural with loads of torque. That is an entirely different animal to bring to a stop. Our brakes on the smaller engined Minis are already incredibly over dimensioned for these cars, granting them exceptional breaking power as compared to most of automotive history. Having driven cars with next to no brakes it is something I am particularly sensitive to.


Mind you, I am NOT recommending that anyone reduce their braking power, just that part of braking is passive safety by way of defensive driving and conservative anticipation. Cars used to go slow in Rallies not because they couldn't go fast, especially if they were lighter than the others, but because they were very hard to slow down before a corner making rollovers and road exists quite frequent.


Thank goodness much of this has gone by the wayside, no pun intended. And few do leave the road what with dual caliper vented discs and ABS or traction control. But it has come with the corollary loss of common sense when approaching an obstacle or entering a corner too fast: don't!


When looking into retaining the 15 inchers on that bigger car I learned that some suggested that I grind down the edges of the calipers to help them fit. If it is just the cast metal casings, why not as long as it won't thin them to the point of causing failure. But there could be insurance and liability issues in case of an unrelated accident, so it isn't necessarily advisable even when done safely. Also that was a full size car which really could use bigger brakes, so I went way big: 16 inch alloys. I could have adapted Brembo brakes made for smaller cars and gotten a powerful lightweight heavy duty braking setup with a large pad footprint and less rotating mass to stop it, but I went cheap and simple.


The Mini is a different prospect entirely. For example, I am thinking given the snow cover which is unusually blanketing most of Europe of getting a set of WINTER Rims and by that token testing out the difference with smaller 15 inch wheels or at most 16 inchers shod with high performance winter rubber. I know that winter tires will be heavier with more rubber and grittier tread, but still if the rims are light enough it might be enough to show what the car would be like in summer attire of the same size?


So this is why I was hoping some folks here might be able to recommend rims which are sturdy but very light weight in 15 inch diameter if possible otherwise in 16 inch rim size if really light too. Because I would want to keep them fairly low profile to also gain the advantage of a smaller diameter total size making the car accelerate considerably quicker thus vastly increasing the fun factor on a naturally aspirated four banger.


Thanks all, for any rim suggestions you might have - with weight first and aesthetics second, because who wants to drive an ugly Mini?


CB

 

Hi Danny Havok,


Shame that they couldn't figure out how to install those wheels... but 16 inchers did probably help with weight reduction, although it maybe isn't sufficient to notice a big change in performance on a Justa Cooper like ours.


Here's a post I found in another thread where the member mounted same size Koenig Feathers and found it improved acceleration on his Cooper S:


https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...80-post15.html


It would be great if there was a database somewhere showing a weight comparison for rims according to size....


CB

 

Hi Creeve,


Would you know what sort of rims they use for autocross? I guess autocross is the sort of intensive use anyone who likes to drive puts their Mini to when tooling around country roads.


CB

 

Hi Czar,


This is cause for some serious pondering. Weight is but one of the advantages of smaller rims. Bigger tires in similar profile will also weight more. Plus what actually I find to be equally annoying as weight, which is easier to notice, is the gearing factor with its associated inertia of larger diameter wheel/tire setups.


However it is said that the footprint on the road will be ever so slightly longer for a larger outer diameter tire, giving more grip without needing to add the extra drag of a wider tire which slows down the car's acceleration.


I like smaller wheels because they tend to help a low torque engine move a car faster (and a high torque engine feel like rocket takeoff). Minis are light weight and thus lend themselves ideally to being thrown about and to accelerating wildly. One way is with a blower meaning a gas hungry less reliable turbo engined S or JCW. Another way is by optimizing the dynamic setup of power transmission by gearing (some have modded their front wheel drive Abarth 500s for that) or wheel size.


Could you tell us the advantages and drawbacks of using Carbon Fiber for rims, aside from price? Are they brittle and liable to failure? TIA.


CB

 

One might be that many of them probably arent even legal to run on the street lol.

 

This is funny because even with thick rubber around small wheels the original Minis were really rough on your backside. Harsh was an understatement but in those days of rudimentary suspension engineering (on cheap production cars, that is) that spelled HANDLING! This made sure that a large following of enthusiasts went for grip instead of comfort.


Today's Minis are not at all the same, and unless one is pointlessly nostalgic yet unable or unwilling to go back to the original, they weren't designed to sacrifice our physical well-being to road performance. But when larger and larger rims and lower and lower profile tires do just that, provide despite the handicap of their over sized girth, then we're missing the point.


Higher profile tires will usually mean greater sidewall flex. This is what at one point had me considering Porsche Cayenne S tires which had to be tall due to that SUV's weight but also needed to be stiff to provide safe high speed handling. They are expensive but I haven't given up on giving them a try. Is it smart? Probably not for a Mini which doesn't need to go so far to get both grip and comfort through the higher air cushion of taller profile tires. I'm sure there's a magic formula to dial in just the right amount of cushioned ride while providing top rank acceleration and grip.


CB

 

Hi I Wash My Car,


Were you referring to Autocross wheels or to Carbon Fiber wheels?


And doesn't this depend on the legislation in the country you drive in?


CB

 

Carbon fiber. Im sure it does depend where you are, and frankly will only become an issue if one fails on the highway and takes out a tour bus launching an investigation by the NHTSA/ DOT/ ect. /ect.

Could be one of the drawbacks is all

 

Rays and SSR are kind of industry standards. BBS RG-F are pretty light in 15" as well.

 

The taller the sidewall the more flex which produces rolling resistance and heat which hurts fuel mileage. We have been switching our semi trucks to shorter sidewall tires to gain fuel mileage. I don't know how much it affects the little cars but makes a difference on my large car.

 

I run a set of 15x7.5 Konig Candy's for autocross. They are 30 offset, and I run a 205/50/15 Kumho Ecsta XS (you can run a wide 225/45/15 as well on these).

http://www.discounttiredirect.com/di...=Car%2FMinivan

These are very reasonable from discounttiredirect (free shipping, and free mounting and balancing).

So far these have been great! I am slammed on Bilstein coilovers and I am not rubbing. These actually clear R53 JCW brakes too! (You must request that wheel weights be put on the inside of the rim, closest to the strut, so they don't come too close to hitting brake caliper)

I put a lot of time and effort into making measurements for these, and they fit great. The 30 offset gives the car a nice wider stance, and the 7.5 inch width is great for 205 or 225 series tires.

This is probably one of the most reasonable 15" wheel options available from a large national distributor. Check em' out!!

 

Konig does offer some light wheels at low prices. Most of them are reproductions which some people have moral issues with. The Candys aren't the lightest of their 15" offerings. Konig Heliums are 10.8 lbs, which makes sense because the design is stolen from Volk. They are the mirror image of the Volk CE28N which weigh 8.5 lbs.

 

Wow, 10.8.. I could set aside any moral outrage for that kind of weight savings, I think.

 

This past fall, I was part of a maintenance crew for a 2002 MCS entered in the Targa Newfoundland http://www.targanewfoundland.com/drivers/cars/2010/727/

The team was running on 15-inch rims to better deal with the rough conditions found throughout the weeklong event. Bigger sidewalls meant to wheel bashing that some other competitors suffered.

Bigger wheels often look nice, but don't necessarily mean better performance.