I've been looking for wheels for my Clubman for the past couple months and continually come back to the Rota RB. I love the classic styling (like the old Panasports).

Based on this thread https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...65-post54.html

I know you can run the RB with a 15mm spacers on the front to clear the brakes. Dan, at Mach V, also mentions in the thread that the 5mm wheel spacer was a smidge too thin and 10mm wasn't available at the time. Now I'm finding 8mm as well as 10mm as options.

So, I'm looking for some real world experience with these wheels over factory JCW brakes. I've seen lots of pictures but would like to get a better understanding of the clearance issues to put as thin of a spacer as possible on the rims.

I honestly, I prefer not to run spacers at all but the RB keeps haunting me!!! The car is a DD and will likely see no track time (just spirited weekend drives).

Cheers!
Todd

 

I run 17x7.5 Rota SVNs on an '09 MINI JCW. They clear the JCW brakes with no spacers. I did have to add 10mm spacers on the front when I added KW coilovers and lowered it.

 

I'm running the Rota RB on my 2009 JCW. I use the 15mm spacer up front, but honestly it seems like a 12 or possibly, maybe even a 10 would work, but then again that's just speculation based on nothing more than looking at it.

The 15mm isn't bad at all and if you do go down I'd suspect it wouldn't be more than 3 or maybe 5 mm if you're lucky which would hardly be noticeable.

The H&R spacers Dan sells are extremely well made. I've seen some guys on the forum that regularly track their JCW with that same setup so it should be solid for street use.

 

I thought you could order Rotas with any offset that you wanted therefore avoiding having to use spacers. Granted you'd have to wait for them but ...

 

The offset will ensure fit from the point of view of clearing your springs/coilovers on the inside and/or clearing your fender well so that the tire doesn't rub on the outside. The reason the Rota RB requires spacers on the R56 JCW is so that they clear the larger brake calipers. You'll have that problem with the RBs on the JCW regardless of the offset.

 

Finally took a pic of the car with the setup you're thinking about (unless you already have it). They work fine so far, and mine is lowered with KW V2s.



The Rota RBs look great on the MINI in my opinion. I agree with you that they bring kind of a classic look to the car. I also love that deep dish look of the RBs.

By the way, where did you find the smaller spacers to fit the JCW? At the time I bought mine I could only find the 15mm set.

 

Very nice! Whenever I try to convince myself to get another wheel I always come back to these. Love the classic look.

I found some here - http://www.mini-madness.com/madness-wheel-spacers.aspx although the smaller ones are not hubcentric.

Any chance at a picture of the clearance to the strut? I'd love to get an idea if something smaller than a 15mm is possible.

Todd

 

Thanks for the info Todd. I'm hoping to get my camber plates installed soon and when I do I'll see if I can snap a few shots while it's on the lift.

I don't have spacers on the back, only the front and only because the RBs don't clear the massive front calipers. I don't think it's necessary to clear the struts.

I'm confident though that an 8mm spacer up front should work though. I plan to email Mini Madness to see what their thoughts are on running spacers that aren't hub-centric and if it's possible to add hubcentric rings to get the job done.

It does work with the 15mm but I'd prefer to user smaller spacers if possible.

Your clubman looks great! It would look amazing on some RBs.

 

Is it possible to use the JCW center caps from the Challenge wheels on the Rota RBs?

 

The center caps aren't interchangeable, but the sticker is easy enough to peel off and you could put a John Cooper Works sticker or any other you wanted in there.

I have the Rota logo still in there and it doesn't look bad at all but I'm planning to remove those and put back the stock JCW logos in there.

 

I would really like to get a set of hubcentric 10mm spacers.... It is wierd that they are not available. Has anyone confirmed that the Rotta RB's will work with 8mm spacers?

 

I agree about the lack of availability. Seems that if they make the spacers in various sizes that they'd offer each size for each vehicle. H&R makes spacers in that size range, but for some reason they only offer 5mm and 15mm for our cars.

I haven't actually confirmed that the 8mm will work, but I'm basing it on this post:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...65-post54.html

Sounds like they ere almost able to get the wheels to fit with 5mm spacers, so my guess (or hope at least) is that 8mm might be enough.

Also, by looking at it anyway, the 15mm spacers clear the calipers by a lot, so (as inaccurate as the eyeballing methodology can be) it also seems to support the theory.

If 8mm doesn't clear the calipers, I'm not sure going to a 10mm spacer would be enough of a difference from the 15mm spacer to make it worthwhile.

 

Sill no reply yet from Mini Madness to my email regarding the spacers. I may end up calling.

 

Not sure why I said strut when I meant brake caliper. Let us know what MM says. I can't keep my eyes of these wheels.

Todd

 

Well, I spoke to MM today and he said since those spacers were designed for the R53 they wouldn't fit on the R56 because the wheel bolt width on the R53 is thinner than the ones on the R56.

He also said that there are tons of spacer choices for the R53 but very few so far for the R56, which seems to be exactly what most of us are finding out as well.

The 15mm spacer works, but if you want to run the RB on the JCW with 235s and you plan to lower it you'll have to add camber plates as well. Once I get mine installed it should get rid of all rubbing under aggressive driving with some negative camber added.

 

H&R and Racemax makes good spacers for the R56. I got my 12 MM and 5 MM racemax from promini.com and they work fine. The 12mm is hubcentric while the 5mm is just flat.

 

Thanks for the tip slinger. I'm hoping to find some 8mm spacers but definitely the 12 would work too as an even better option to the 15mm H&Rs. I'd actually recommend it over the 15 since the 15 is overkill.

The 8mm is flat too and, like the 5mm, is probably thin enough so that it doesn't have to be hubcentric as I'm guessing there would still be enough space left on the rotor's hub to perfectly center the wheel.

Seems 8mm, or even a hubcentric 10mm, doesn't exist yet for the R56.

The 15mm works no problem, but I'd prefer to use the thinest possible while still clearing the brake calipers.

 

Is this for the front or the rear?

If your car is lowered you cannot push the rim outward too far as you will rub on the outer fender.

 

It's for the front only. Necessary to clear the larger Brembo calipers on the JCW.

 

I am sure that you can probably camber enough angle to clear the fender with wider tires and 15mm spacers, but at what cost to the tire. I mean how often would you really want that much camber? track days...maybe... but you will probably burn the edges in 5k miles.

Come on vendors how hard is it to make 10s

 

True. It's definitely a give and take. I do plan to track it this summer so the negative camber is welcomed.

I can always go back down to 215/45-17 after the summer and put back some positive camber.

I found this which looks pretty good:

http://www.motorsport-tech.com/wheel_spacers.html

May be a very good alternative for R56 owners who want a better selection. I priced a pair of 8mm hub centric spacers and it came out to $70, which is competitive. I'd guess 10mm wouldn't cost much more.

Might be the way to go.

 

Hard, maybe impossible. The reason is hubcentricity. A 10mm spacer is too thick to have the factory hub snout stick out to center the wheel, so the spacer itself will have to have a snout on it. But the part where the snout would attach to the spacer has to be milled out to make room for the factory hub. This leaves little or no room for attaching the snout to the spacer. Does that make sense?

--Dan
Mach V

 

Dan,

Thanks for adding to this thread.

So if I understood correctly, what you're saying is that the spacer has to extend out past the factory hub snout to be able to have enough room to mill a snout on the spacer that's the correct size to fit the into the wheel while still fitting over the stub?

So that's why the 5mm flat spacer works, since it leaves enough of the factory hub snout exposed to center the wheel?

If I did understand all of that correctly (and if not please correct me), can you help clear up a few questions:

Do you think using an 8mm spacer would be enough to clear the JCW calipers?

If so, and like the 5mm spacer, do you think an 8mm flat spacer would leave enough of the factory hub exposed to still be able to center the wheel?

If not, is it possible to still reliably center the wheel on a flat spacer that extends past the factory hub?

I appreciate help you could provide.

 

Yes.

I don't know. If it does, it would be REALLY close. I"m guessing it would NOT fit.

I don't know.

Yes. Although hubcentric fitment is ideal, running a wheel using only the lugs bolts to center it can work. I've done that on several cars in the past, and had no problems. In theory there's maybe a structural issue -- you're asking the lug bolts to carry the entire weight of the car, rather than sharing it with the hub -- but I've even done this on a car at the road course with no problems... In the olden days most wheels were lugcentric instead of hubcentric.

--Dan
Mach V

 

fine fine... if H&R can make hub centric 5s and 15s, and the other place can make 12s then why not tens. Isn't that what a billet lathe is for? I mean maybe this is too much math for me, but why cant a snout be lathed into the billet part?