What's your favourite place to look for rims online? Know of any site that sells OEM like rims for cheaper than the dealership?

Apparently my two front rims are bent (no idea how it happened) and the dealership is quoting me over $1000 to replace the rims and remount the tires. They say the tires appear fine.

I'm thinking I can replace all 4 rims for cheaper than that somewhere.

 

I had a very good experience with tirerack.com when I replaced my 16" rims and wheels from the chrome and RF OEM's. Got great Conti all weather tires and sharp black Enkei rims in 17". They ship it all to an installer near you, or directly to you! they are very helpful and knowledgable! thought prices good too.

 

Before you go trashing the rims, call a rim repair shop. Just do a google search in your area. They usually charge something like $100~$150 per wheel to fix bent rims and will clean up any curb rash you may have on them. Certainly cheaper than getting new wheels.

 

http://www.tirerack.com/index_w.jsp
http://www.discounttire.com/dtcs/home.do
http://www.discountedwheelwarehouse.com/
http://www.wheelfire.com/

 

The service rep at BMW/MINI told me BMW doesn't recommend fixing rims cause it makes them brittle and unsafe. Full of crap?

 

The folks at theminipartstore dot com took very good care of me on OEM MINI wheels.

 

I like http://www.car-part.com/ though eBay is another option.

Keith, who is still looking for a pair of R82 8-spoke 15X5.5 wheels...

 

I've seen the repairs last for years. Even many of the major auto magazines use alloy wheel repairs for their long term cars that end up with bent rims from potholes and such. The repairs are usually guaranteed for some length of time, but I'd compare the repairs to the cost of a new wheel and what the guarantee they give you is.

 

What size wheels do you have? Runflat tires?

You can easily find a set of wheels to fit your tires for under $1000 that are decent.

Tirerack is an easy place to look, Outmotoring.com has wheels as well for MINIs.

If you buy wheels from tirerack get them to tell you where the nearest shop to you could do the mounting and balancing, the dealership will charge you more for that service. Tirerack has a list of shops they work with, you can even tell tirerack to drop ship the tires to the shop then have the shop call you when the tires come in.

If you don't have a contact at tirerack try Alex at extention 294.

 

Try the for sale forum on here I see rims in here all the time!