I'm planning on picking up an 2004 R50 used as my first MC. I'm not sure what the wheels are that are on it, but they currently have winters mounted.

I'm not rushing into lowering the car just yet, as I'm getting married this year and don't want to go too crazy on the car. I drive a lot of highway miles and enjoy hitting the less travelled routes for some twisties.

Sooooo.... here's what the car currently looks like. I'd like to fill the gap as much as possible, maintain/improve handling, and not lose too much power due to extra weight. (tall order, right?) In regards to wheel and tire size, what would people recommend to achieve this goal? Spacers or offset to push the wheels out a bit aren't a problem either.

 

You do not loose any power when filling the wheel gap, they are not really directly related. If you choose heavy wheels and tires you might feel like you lost power but it just takes more energy/power to move those heavy objects from a stop.

What is your budget for wheels and for tires? That will limit your choices.

Are you planning on keeping the stock 16" wheels and winter tires?

If you are trying to fill the gap without lowering the suspension the best way to do that is to get a tire which is slightly taller than OEM.

205/55-16 and 215/45-17 are both good at that.
You need to decide if you want the tires to be more for street use, comfort and longer treadlife with handling and performance as secondary or the other way around. If you don't like having to change to winter tires religiously and for longer treadlife you can consider Ultra High Performance All Season tires or Grand Touring All Season tires.

If changing to winter tires is a no brainer for you then Ultra High Performance or Max Summer tires will work OK. They tend to offer handling and performance over comfort and long treadlife. If you don't drive more than 12000 miles per year it's not too bad.

Once you lower your suspension you will have a harder time fitting those larger than OEM tire sizes on your MINI but if you upgrade to ride height adjustable coilovers you can adjust the height to just clear any tire size you choose.

Using spacers is possible but if they are much thicker than 3mm you may need to get longer wheel bolts or switch to wheel studs that are long enough for the spacers and open ended lug nuts to fit. Closed end acorn nuts are possible but need to be exactly matched to the length of the wheel stud and spacer.

Realize that using spacers for the MINI are merely for looks and will not help with handling or performance. Some people think that excessive spacer thickness can speed up wear on the wheel bearings over time. Certainly it adds weight if nothing else.

There is no need to get ultra wide wheels for the MINI, 7" is about right if you have the correct offsets. If you want full adjustability for the flush look you may need front adjustable camber plates and rear lower adjustable control arms. These allow for making the camber more negative in front or the rear to tuck in the tire or make it exactly flush. Offset of the wheel allows for the wheel to stick out but you will need the inner tilt of negative camber to make it look good.

The effect of more negative camber in front is more wear on the inner treads of the front tires. More negative camber in the rear increases oversteer when cornering at high speeds.

The best one upgrade you can do is to add an adjustable (3 hole) stiffer than OEM rear swaybar, usually a solid 19mm bar will work best, set it to softest which is the hole farthest from the bend in the bar. This allows the rear suspension to be stiffer and helps reduce understeer when turning hard. If you never experience understeer when you drive fast then you can wait on the rear swaybar upgrade.

For 16" wheels consider-
OEM is 16x6.5 et48
A good place to start is 16x7 et42 which sticks out 12.4mm more than OEM. The smaller the offset number the more the wheel sticks out.
When possible it is better to find a wheel with the correct offset and spare needing to add spacers.

For 17" wheels:
OEM is 17x7 et48
Consider 17x7 et42, this sticks out about 12.4mm more than OEM.

When buying any wheel consider the weight of the wheel and tire, you want something as light as strong as possible for better more responsive handling, better acceleration and braking.

You can shop for wheels on tirerack.com and contact Alex@tirerack.com for more info.

A good example of good well priced reasonably strong but light rims are those made by Enkei Racing. Cast alloy wheels are cheaper to make and usually strong enough for street use while not being too heavy but that may depend on the wheel maker. Heavy alloy wheels are usually less expensive and need to be heavy to provide enough strength.

If you have bad roads be very careful when driving so as not to damage your tires or rims which is always a big risk.

Finally the other option for the more practical MC owner is 15" wheels. This is a good choice for the MC owner due to having smaller base front brake calipers that will allow a 15x7" wheel to fit over the brake. The other advantage is that there are many tire sizes that will fit and perform well for street use. 195/60-15 is a good tire size that allows for Ultra High Performance All Season tires.

You do not need to use runflat tires with your MINI, the base MC comes with a compact spare tire under the boot area.

 

Yes. I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada, and it tends to snow a bit here.

That's the plan - if I can snag a tire that's say an inch bigger without too much extra rotational mass and throwing the speedo off...

Yeah, once again - being in Canuckistan I always run two sets. Summer/AS and Winter, both on their own rims as I'm too cheap to pay someone to change my tires.

I was under the impression that pushing the wheels out increases the overall stability of the vehicle.

I figured where there was still some wheel gap that pushing the tires out would fill the gap and remove the spacers from the equation. Plus a wide tire just looks sexy IMHO. (I'm currently driving a BMW 330i and love the big fat feet).

Good to know.

Once again, good to know.

This kind of interested me. I was noticing some Autox setups used 15's. While not planning on autocrossing anymore (did it a while ago in Neons), I did like the look of the 15 and 16 wheels on the Mini. When pushed out they look very sporty. I was also under the impression that the 15's/16's generally weighed less than 17's+ and made the vehicle more responsive. (Decreased rot mass again.)

This may all be moot as a yellow S model has appeared on the radar for less than the gold one. The only issue is the AC doesn't work, and the passenger seat won't recline. AC shouldn't be more than $500 or so if I get a rebuilt off of eBay, and the seat sounds like the situation where you body check it to get it to move again. The car's actually $500 less than the non-S and is the same year. So, it's a strong possibility I'll pick up the S.

 

What model year is the Cooper S for sale? Check the brakes, if it is stock brakes and early 2003-2005 then even 15" wheels will fit over the stock brakes but if it is a later model year or if it can JCW brakes then 16" wheels are the smallest that will fit.

What are your roads like? Smooth as glass or full of ruts and potholes?

The wheel size will limit the tire sizes that will fit. 24.9" tire diameter is about as large as you would want to go.

Thin spacers do not push your wheels out far enough to make any difference in handling so it's basically for looks or get clearance for fitment.

I have a 2003 MCS and use OEM 15" wheels for daily driving with UHPAS 195/60-15 tires. They work fine and provide enough good handling with as comfortable a ride as can be expected with a performance suspension. When I want to do autocross I can put on either 15x8" or 17x7" wheels.

 

Both are 04's. The S has 159500k, the base has 182000k.

Horrible, crappy pothole ridden messes due to freeze-thaw cycles.

Cool. I know it's not cool, but I like a bit more rubber between me and the road. Comfort is nice when you are going on 400k road trips (each way) all the time.

Here are a couple of pics of the S.

<snipped>

I'm feeling the yellow, and S won't have that risky 5-speed right?

 

The yellow 2004 S looks OK, it's likely that the clutch has been replaced, if not it's near to needing it done.

Look for the complete maintenance records-

Check for power windows (motor/regulators) replaced
Check for wear on front control arm bushings- these are always worn out after about 80,000 miles and lead to a lot of play in the front wheels.
Check for mushrooming damage of the front shock tower plates, the owner may have added a front strut bar or alloy plates to help reduce the risk of mushrooming from hitting potholes.
Check the suspension and wheels for any damage from hitting potholes.
Check for wear on the tires, are they non runflats?
Were there any modifications done to the Cooper S?
Was the power steering pump/fan replaced- this is covered under a technical service bulletin.
Remember that the Cooper S has no spare tire while the base cooper came with one.

The Cooper S manual transmission is a Getrag and is good.

Since your roads are bad your best bet is to get a tire that has more sidewall.

195/60-15
205/55-16
215/45-17

These all will work and are common sizes for street use.

If you want to push the maximum limits then even-
You can consider even 195/65-15 which has a large tire diameter of 25".
see
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/survey...wws=N&showcm=N
Continental PureContact and Bridgestone Turanza Serenity Plus are excellent commuting street tires.

If you do decide on 15" wheels you can use anything from OEM 15x5.5 to 15x7", and they all are fairly lightweight compared to the larger wheels.

 

Thanks for the advice - it's crazy how light those 15s are!

 

The yellow guy didn't call back and I took home the R50. The wheels are 16's and have 195/55R16s on em, they appear to be R83's (so are about 20 lbs a piece). They're winter tires, so they'll have to come off. I notice there's a tire pressure button in the car, so that means TPMS. boo.

Looking at the rubber I can see on this wheel I think I'd be happy with the 16 inch setup with a new lighter wheel. I'll get the sensors pulled out of the wheels when I get the new ones on, and when I have a few more bucks after the wedding I'll get some and throw them in the winters. So, 16x7 et42 was discussed above, which should push the wheels out further, add a half inch of width, and still give me decent rubber. What tire size would you recommend considering that I still want to minimize wheel gap? The gap that's there now really doesn't look that bad, and with the wheel pushed out the 12.5 mm extra that will likely help it *look* as if there's less gap.



I

 

As mentioned in post #2
If you are trying to fill the gap without lowering the suspension the best way to do that is to get a tire which is slightly taller than OEM.

205/55-16 and 215/45-17 are both good at that.

I don't think you have TPMS, that was from about 2007 onward.

It's just a flat tire reset button.
see
http://www.minicooperspeed.com/minicooperflattire/

 

ahhhh.... Must be that rotation counting system or something to calculate when your tire's low. Since the trifecta indicates a speed sensor issue that makes sense.

 

I ended grabbing a set of used 17x7 offset 40mm 5 spoke Privat's. They appear to weigh about 16 lbs each, good for some weight reduction off the stock. I've got a line on some barely used Michelin Pilots (75%), 225/45R17 at $20 each. Do you think the 225 will still fit on the stock suspension given the offset? Everything I've looked at suggests yes, but I defer to your expertise.

 

Which Michelin Pilot tire? Likely PS2 which is older, the rest are relatively new models.

Pilot Sport A/S 3 H or V Speed rated
Pilot Sport A/S 3 W or Y speed rated
Pilot Super Sport
Pilot Sport PS2

Generally 225/45-17 is wider and taller than OEM so for an R50 MINI you risk rubbing on anything but OEM suspension. With an aggressive wheel offset the risk of rubbing goes up. The only good thing is the tires are worn and hopefully in the right place for clearance, otherwise you will need to shave plastic off of the inner wheel arches in the rear. It may rub worst with a full load or over dips.

 

I ran 225 45 17's on two R56S's with oem stock wheels and suspension, it's a very close fit with minimum clearance. It definitely made the car look lowered and people would ask how much regularly.

In all honesty I don't think you're going to have the clearance on the R50, but you won't know until you try. If you don't have hight issues you can always add spacers if needed.

 

Clearance is more on a R56 with OEM suspension, so much so that some owners report that 225/45-17 will fit.

For R50 and R53 there are some OEM suspensions that might be high enough to allow a tire as large as 225/45-17 to fit but it may require a bit of fine tuning.

R50 and R53 do use OEM 16" wheels and tall 205/55-16 tires and they will fit with OEM suspension, granted 205mm wide tires are not extra wide on 6.5" wheels so that helps a lot.

As tires wear down the tire diameter shrinks as does the thickness of the shoulder blocks, this helps for fitment. There is actually quite a bit of difference in shoulder tread blocks on new tires, some are square and others more rounded.

 

Here's the end result:









They don't stick out too far, fill the gap nicely, and the wheels only weigh 16 lbs a piece. Tires are 215/45-17. I'm happy with the results, and it only ended up costing about $700 for new tires and used wheels. Maybe next year once we're done with the wedding trip I'll pick up some new wheels.