I am swapping out the 15 holey's for 17's as soon as I pick up my MC. My question is...when I get a flat tire, will it be a problem riding on the spare doughnut tire since it is not a 17 like the rest of my wheels will be? Orrrrr will it be ok for say 50 miles max? Sorry for the dumb question :impatient but I have never changed tire sizes on any of my cars before...and i have had flat tires which i have replaced a few times.

 

as long as the circumference is close to the same, it's ok.

15's or 16's or 17's or 18's. tire sidewall gets narrower
as the wheel size increases.

 

nuff said, Ken

I got a 15" OEM donut, sitting behind the front passenger seat (easiest way to place it somewhere ).

 

doood....i forgot to tell you... 15" donuts don't fit over the front MCS
brakes!










just kidding!

 

Graci!!!

 

i am just keeping it for cosmetics anyways

 

berky, did you know that if you fill it up with helium and put the
tire on the car, the tire will howl at a higher pitch?







stop scratching your head, it won't!

 

no problemo.

 

Doesn't matter anyway since you should NEVER use a spare tire on the front drive wheels. If you get a flat front tire, first remove the rear wheel and install the donut spare there. Then move the good rear wheel to the front.

 

Never heard that before, why would this be? You should only be driving slowly to the nearest repair center anyway. I can't imagine changing two tires on the interstate to fix one flat.

 

I have. It's because the tires won't rotate at the same speed and may damage the differential. Depends on how far you need to go, how fast you want to go, and how paranoid you are...

Fortunately, on the MINI it's not hard to change both wheels on one side as lifting at the front jacking point raises both wheels.

 

on the newer models with LSD, it prematurely wears the clutch in the
LSD due to the difference in rotation from L/R while the spare is on
the car.

but to get from nowhere to a tire store, I think putting them on the
front is okay as long as you don't go too far (too far as in 50miles+).
but this is only my feeling.

 

I would think that the spare that came with my MC would be close enough to the size of the 16" factory tires so this wouldn't be a problem. If not, the owners manual would tell me to move a rear tire to the front if I have a flat on the front. Of course, I haven't read the entire owners manual, maybe it says this...but I doubt it.

I was thinking I would need another jack to rotate my tires. If I can lift the entire side with one jack, I guess not.

 

If you have a floor jack - no problem. I have the wheels off Nittany a few times a year. Seemed like every w/e for the first year or so... :impatient

If all you have is the factory jack, I'm not 100% sure. I think we've only used that jack once and that was shortly after she got the car just to go through the motions. Better to figure out how it works while sitting on the driveway rather than in the rain on the side of the highway.

We make bags to store the spare in and I can say for sure that the factory compact spare is considerably smaller than a typical 16" tire.