Recently there were a flood of posts from unhappy customers about quality issues with Edgeracing.com's Flik Wheels. While these posts were negative, I read through them, and subsequently visited Edgeracing.com's website, and fell in love with their Flik Fuel wheels, not to mention was pleasantly surprised to find them on Summer Sale for $79 a piece. This includes hardware (lug bolts, centering rings) and mounting of tires if I bought them together.



After several posts here on NAM looking for anyone who has them, I couldn't find one person willing to admit they had these wheels. In fact, I got a PM from one person who told me about all the negative posts and to look elsewhere.

After a bit more research, I decided to go ahead and buy the wheels. I ordered them on Friday night, and by the following Friday they arrived. Well sort of. Someone at Edgeracing goofed and put my shipping ZIP code as 90086 instead of 90066 and UPS got confused. They actually correctly delivered one set of wheels to me on Friday, even though a call to UPS said neither would be delivered. I asked if I could Willl Call the wheels and after 5 hours of talking to different reps, I couldn't get the wheels.

Then Monday rolls around, and the UPS tracking says there is a problem with the "lost" wheels. A call to UPS and they say it's scheduled for delivery TOMORROW, but that I can pick it up at Will Call today. So I go to Will Call, and the UPS guy says he can't locate the wheels, that they are somewhere in transition to another UPS facility. Another call to UPS and they confirm that's true and that I would have to wait until Tuesday for delivery. I get home a little frustrated, and continue with my day. And sure enough at 6PM, UPS rolls up and drops off the second set of missing wheels! On Monday, not Tuesday.

What a wild ride that was.

With that behind me, I took my tires which I bought from DAVE, to a local tire mounting shop that he recommended, and the shop was very careful with my new wheels, and mounted and balanced them.


I took them home, and swapped my OEM 16" 5 Stars with the new 15" Flik Fuels and went for a drive. I drove over speed bumps, and drove around at 35 to 40 MPH, and no issues. Then I merged onto the freeway and got up to 75 and no balancing or vibration issues as other complained with the Flik Wasps 17". Drove around some more, and for around $350 after shipping, am COMPLETELY satisfied with my purchase.

I went from 40 pounds to 33 pounds per wheel. With lighter tires like Toyo's, I can shave off a few more pounds as well. I think it looks much more serious! After 64,000 miles, I'm ready for a little change in appearance for my MINI.

 

Looks nice. How does that front look? Is there enough space to fit over my JCW BBK?

 

Looks great. Now go out and put those tires to good use for team justacooper.

 

Sweeeeeeet! Very nice buddy!

 

I haven't seen the calipers, but we can try. It looked like a pretty tight fit on the OEM calipers though. Are you joining us for the run this Saturday?? We could try it then.

Richard

 

thank you for the positive write up. a good read indeed.

 

looks great - what size tire?

 

Man that looks cool! I am also in the process of switching over the 15s on my S.

 

The tires shown are Falken RT-615's in 205/50 R15, which is smaller than stock size, and results in the speedo reading 5-8% optomistic. The size which would match the stock diameter is 205/55 R15.

 

They look great Richard. Just so you know, I've had my 17" Wasps on the car for over a year with no problem other than running out of rubber on the tires.

With that tall rubber, they remind me of a classic Mini setup for some reason.

 

No, prior commitments. I will hold off bugging you about that for a bit. I got something else cooking. Hopefully it will work out.

 

Those wheels look great!!

 

notice any difference with acceleration with the smaller tire?

thanks!

 

For autocross, yes, the gearing advantage of 205/50 R15 does help. For the real world, where you're not trying to necessarily get the most out of 2nd gear and shifting is way more common, I would probably just get 205/55 R15 tires and have my speedometer and odometer read correctly.

 

I am going with 205/55 Proxes4s but I've found that the tire selection is MUCH better if you go with 50s. The Azenis look absolutely awesome!

Is it possible to have the speedometer recalibrated?

 

Since I drive my MINI like a motorcycle---first off the line at a stoplight, good acceleration is important to me, and subtle changes are easily noticed. Lately the weather has cooled down, and the difference of driving in 73deg versus 78deg is very noticeable.

With the smaller and lighter wheel + sticky firm rubber, I've noticed the difference when starting from a standstill on a hill, as well as when taking the local s-curves near my house. Of course this is more likely from the lighter wheel and not the smaller tire. But since I came from a 16" wheel/tire, that still counts.

What I'm not certain of, and I'm sure Dave can answer this, if my speedo is off, does that mean I'm actually going slower than my speedo shows or faster? Since I like to cruise at just above legal speeds on the freeway, its probably a good thing to know. LOL

Richard

 

Richard,

Your speedometer will be reading about 5-8% high (i.e. you're going 60, but the speedo reads in the 63-65 range).

 

Thanks!!

 

Flik domed decals. Nice, but it's not MINI!!!!


First I measured the existing Flik domed decals with my digital caliper. They were 1.750 inches. I went to Adobe Illustrator and created a circle with that dimension. Then I created the MINI logo text and placed it. Then using my little Roland vinyl cutter, I cut the pieces.


It looks unfinished without the logo!


The Flik wheels came with these plastic covers. I didn't want to use the included Flik domed decals.


Lots of silver MINI logos and black circles ready for assembly.


Transfer tape with silver logo is just eyeballed into place on the black circle.


Transfer tape applied to silver logo and cut out.


Overlaid the first silver vinyl on the black circle.


2 color vinyl overlaid. The black MINI text was just some extra that I cut in case I needed it. A lot of unused vinyl is tossed when you cut logos, so making use of them for the future is a good way to save some money.


Test fitting the Flik domed decal (upside down) to check accuracy.


Flik covers wrapped and ready to install! I was glad that they wrapped over the existing decals without any wrinkles. I did have a few small bubbles I popped, and I didn't exactly center the MINI logo each time, but there are on my wheels!! It didn't matter that much to me. It was good enough.


Flik covers that came with the wheels ready for transformation


Another cool shot. Then I realized that it also highlights the different lug bolt! Ugh, I need to get a new one. I stripped the original one on install.


Really the final touch that was needed!


Custom MINI covers. Actually it's just a black vinyl disc with silver vinyl lettering. Looks cool though! Looks glossy and almost as if they were domed as well!

The vinyl cutter I used was the Roland Stika SX-8 which I bought for around $500. I see that Roland just replaced it with the SV-8. Regardless, it's a great small cutter for all kinds of uses. But obviously not worth it to buy if you are just doing these wheel decals for yourself. Besides the labor might be daunting if you've never done it before.


a quickr pickr post

 

Ryan at grafxwerks.com will do the same for $20/shipped, for those who are bound to ask. Just need to measure what the dimension is for your specific caps. Pics shown on his site are from our car.

for the 15" combo....looking to do the same if we can sell out stock ones and 17" ASA AR1's .