HElLO therE!
I was thinking about upgrading from the 16" Bridge-spoke to the 17" Flame-spoke, My question was does it effect the MPG? or the ride? I test drove a MCS with the 16" wheels, the sales person told me that 17" wheels might create a firmer ride?

thanks for your input

 

A 17" wheel/tire combo should produce more road noise and transmit more road jitter to the car than the 16" wheel/tire combo. How much? It would depend on the tires used I suppose.

 

I debated this in my mind before ordering. I was going to go for the 16" until I started looking at tires on The Tire Rack. There were more choices for the 17" and they were getting better user reviews. That and the 17" give you a wider tire.

The 17" may give you a harsher ride, as there is less wall to absorb impacts. Runflats will also give you a harsher ride because they have thicker walls.

I'm told that 205/45 - 17" is not that radical a ratio. The 18" wheels would give you a radical tire.

 

Along with the jitter is better handling, right?

Why more road noise?

 

On my old MINI Cooper, I never could get it to handle right with 17 inch wheels. I loved the look, but coldn't deal with weight, tramlining (having the car follow tire ruts on the highway) etc. I ran into this with my Z3 roadster a while back as well. Here in the DC area, roads aren't maintained well enough to really enjoy driving with 17 inch wheels. Sadly, there are slim pickings in 16 inch sizes that are still cool enough to pick for the MINI. Good luck. I would try better tires for sure, the runflats aren't that great.

 

The car will handle better because your tires will have shorter sidewalls, resulting in less flex during cornering. Also, your car's footprint (the total contact area between your tires and the ground) will be larger with 17's and the more rubber you have on the road, the better your car will grip it.

The road noise and harsh ride are just byproducts of these characteristics, but are also greatly dependent on the type of tire (tread design, runflat, etc). This having been said, Mini promised that the R56 suspension is calibrated to better dampen the car's motions and absorb shocks, so the ride on 17's should not be too much harsher than that on the 16's. I suggest just test-driving the two back to back.

 

Same reason as the harsher ride. Less rubber to absorb the vibrations from the road surface before it gets transmitted to the wheel, then to the rest of the car.

Yes, turn-in and settle time should be slightly quicker.

I went with 16" wheels for cost reasons. The 17" wheels from Mini are too bloody expensive.

I can change to 17's later on.

 

Yea, if you want some the non-standard designs, the prices seem high. I went for the Sport Package. If you subtract the cost of the DSC and Xenon Headlights, I paid $350 for the 17" upgrade.

 

I did not do any packages. I think the Sport package has the sprt suspension, which I did not want. So I was looking at all the optional 17" wheels in the configurator. The only ones I found attractive were over $2,000 for the set. I only looked at the price when I saw a wheel I liked.

 

You are thinking of the Hyper Sport Package, which is not available yet. It includes the sport suspension and body kit.

The Sport Package has DSC, Xenon headlamps with powerwash (reminds me of 5th Element), and 17" crown spoke wheels. If you want a different design it costs more. I haven't seen any wheels for the MINI that I'm in love with, so the standard crown spokes will do.

 

Agree with most of what you said. The footprint of 16 and 17" tires is actually the same size at the same pressure. The shape is different and that shape further contributes to the performance, noise and harshness you note. To exaggerate, long and narrow 16" tire footprint feels softer over bumps than short and wide 17s, but does not corner as well.

 

Thanks for all the posts guys, what about mpg, does it effect that? I would think that it would with the wheels being bigger!

 

The mileage could be slightly worse with the 17" tire/wheel package, but there are a lot of variables, and in any case, I suspect the difference would be slight. Wider tires will increase the aerodynamic drag slightly. If the 17" combo is heavier than the 16" package, that will also have a slight adverse affect on milage. All in all, the MPG change should be tiny.

I agree with much of what has been written, but would add one point: I have seen it written (R&T, I think) that the MINI was designed to work best with 16" wheels. Again, I reckon the difference to be slight. As to the number of choices being smaller in 16" tires, that may not matter much. All you need is one tire that meets your needs.

Happy motoring,


Joe S

 

Interesting. What causes the 17's footprint to be shorter? Isn't the O.D. the same for both?

 

All season tires are important to me. On researching the 16" OEM AS tires I found that none had good ratings at Tirerack. So I looked at the 17" and found that the Goodyear Eagle RS-A EMTs are rated considerably better than any of the other available run flat all season tires. So .. My dealer is going to put on my car, a set of 17" S-Lite wheels having Goodyear Eagle RS-A EMTs.

Now though, I've learned that for 2007 the tires are all different from what I researched (now referred to as 'gen 1' tires). The new gen 2 tires are getting good comments but they're new so there's no history on them that can be checked at, for instance, Tirerack. About all I could learn is that they provide a less harsh ride than the 'gen 1' tires.

The R56 reviews have all said that even with 17" wheels the R56 ride is significantly less harsh than the ride of the R53 with 17s. But .. there's speculation that the R56's less harsh ride is because of the new generation tires.

My worry now is that I'll have a harsher ride than other R56's experience because of my chosen 'gen 1' tires. I should know in a couple of days (chances are good my car will be here and ready for pick-up Thursday).

My question for all you R53 folks, have any of you had the 17" Goodyear Eagle run flats. They apparently have very good tread life and are rated excellent in both ride comfort and noise comfort at Tirerack. I'd like to hear from you.

for this post .. point being .. on comparing .. the ride comfort and noise comfort varies considerably depending on what tires are selected for those 17" wheels.

P.S. The tires I was most concerned about getting were the Dunlop run flats, none of which got very good grades in most categories at Tirerack. One of the biggest complaints in reading the reviews on these tires is poor tread life. Not a good thing when you're getting a car that has very expensive tires.

 

I should have posted this link to Tirerack rather than try to explain it myself.

 

Thanks. Good to know. Now I'm wondering whether I should have just ordered the DSC separately, and not the Sports Package with 17" wheels.

 

My Sports package (2007 R56 MC non-S) has 16-inch bridge spoke aluminum spoke wheels (aside sports seats, rear and front fog lights, rear spoiler and DSC).

Wanna trade your 17 inch?

MMM

 

Thanks for the offer. I actually like the look of the bridge spoke wheels better than the crown spoke I'm getting. However, wondering is not a state for taking action. I'd have to find out that 17" was a mistake before I did anything about it. So, I'll have to scrub some tire first.

I suspect used 16" would be easy to come by, as people save up to pimp out their MINIs.

 

MINIUSA configurator shows the MINI Cooper (non-S) at 16" (as mine is), and the MINI Cooper S at 17" with the Sports package upgrade.

I'll probably buy a set of 17" Tirerack's ASA AR2's after someone checks that they are compatible with the 2007 axle.

MMM

 

MiniMartha,

You have not mentioned what kind of driving you enjoy. Will you be doing track days or Auto-X? Commuting? Weekend canyon blasting? Do you enjoy boulevard cruising?

What is it that you are looking for while driving about in your MINI?

For normal, everyday, motoring there is no need to go to the 17" wheels or the, optional for 2007, Sport Suspension. Replacement tires for 16" wheels are also less expensive.

The 2007 R56s will ride more smoothly than the 2002 - 2006 R53s because of the changes to the suspension. Softer springs and modified rates of the shock adsorbers has softened the ride over surface imperfections.

The R53s came stock with Sport Suspension Plus which is a tighter, rougher, suspension than what is offered in the R56.

Somebody else mentioned the differences between the Gen 1 and Gen 2 runflat tires. Regardless of which tires you use the R56 will offer a more gentle ride than the earlier cars. Non-runflat tires will be even smoother and more gentle for either the R53 or R56.

The 16" wheels offer a smoother ride, with reduced road noise, than the 17" wheels. On the R53s the 16" wheel was the wheel of choice for the Auto-X racing crowds. Because of their reduced weight, they allowed the wheels to follow the road more closely, improving compliance and handling when being driven over bumps. Quicker acceleration and better braking are other benefits of the light weight 16" wheels. The 16" wheel also was smoother for all conditions because it is the wheel that the designers optimized the suspension for.

On the R56, if I am not mistaken, the designers worked with both size wheels and made significant improvements in ride comfort and quietness.

As for the MPG, the differences between the two wheels, will be very small but slightly favoring the 16". The R56 will see an approximate 20% improvement in fuel milage over the R53 because of advancements in engine design.

hope this helps.

 

Late 2006 R53s and the R56s use a thicker wheel bolt than the earlier cars. No other changes were made.

 

I don't care if the ride is harsher and result in more rattles. My only concern is the tramlining, which bugs the heck out of me when cruising on freeway. That's the only reason I am going with the 16's. I love the look and handling of the 17's. I just don't like going side to side on the freeway while everybody else is wondering if I am drunk or not.

 

the tramlining comes from the tread. some tires do it, some don't.
no need to swap the entire set of rims, just change tires. ive run toyo's, friends run kuhmo's and falken's. no reports of tramlining from those tires. same for bf goodrich's.

 

I think tramlining will happen more often from the front toe setting and the softness/grippiness of the tire, with the road clearly a factor if it has grooves from the 18 wheelers.

Back to the original question, if the 16 and 17 inch tire has the same overall diameter, the mpg will be essentially the same. The other posters are all correct about drag et al, I think that's negligable in the real world at our speeds.

17's are slightly less comfortable in a straight line, more fun in the turns.