When do you need to use spacers? I put on a set of 18's on my wife's Cooper and last winter when taking them off I noticed that there was a dent in passanger side dent.

The tires are 215/35/18 and rims are Enkei Bortex. I'm not sure the specs on the rims, I bought them used off someone else using them in an Acura 1.7.

 

There was a dent in the passenger side dent? I think your fingers may have slipped up there a bit.

Generally, you use spacers when you have clearance problems between the wheel/tire and parts of the suspension or body. For instance, without spacers, your brake caliper might hit the wheel spokes, or the inner edge of your tire might rub on the fender liner.

 

Use spacers for front brake or rear lower trailing arm clearance.

If you rub and hear a scraping and grinding noise then you need a spacer. Just enough to clear is usually fine. Can be as little as 3mm. Once you make the spacer thick you will need a longer stud or longer bolt than stock.

Some owners like spacers to make the wheels stick out farther but that's only for looks and not very helpful. If you go extreme you can put more stress on the wheel bearings if you go extra wide.

For your situation it does not sound like you need spacers for a wheel dent likely due to a road pothole that was hit by the wheel at some point.

 

Wider track in the front will dial out understeer and increase grip. Good stuff.

 

To some degree.

The wider/thicker the spacer the more the effect assuming
You have enough front negative camber to make good use of the tire and if the tire is wide enough to take advantage of the wider track.

So before you go wide on a front spacer-
Don't use narrow tires
Expect more wear on your outer front tire tread edges if you have stock front camber.

 

Good advice in general.

 

So spot on, I just put 5mm spacers all the way around cause front tires were slightly rubbing shocks. after only 120 miles noticed outer edges were almost bald.

Is there any way to get any slight negative camber without camber plates?

 

In the early MINI models you can't do much with stock front camber even with dropping the suspension. Only the rear camber gets more negative, fronts stay the same.

Front fixed camber plates are cheaper than adjustable ones but they will give you a certain amount of camber that might be different right to left.

In the R56 for MC or MCS you have a little adjuster for the front camber that allows for a minor change up to a little less than 1 degree negative vs -0.5 for stock.

 

I think you may have some other issues going on. I put 20k miles on my last set of tires with stock camber and 8mm spacers up front and wear was fine. Quite even, actually.

 

Sorry, I meant that I found a dent on the passenger side strut. I remember that there was still enough space between the rim and the strut to fit my finger through. The driver side had no issues, so I guess it could have possibly been due to a pot hole or something.

Thanks for the responses.