Has anybody experienced steering wheel vibration after installing wheel spacers?

 

sounds like they are not seated correctly or maybe you need hub centric rings installed

 

+1, what size are they, and what MINI? Also, on the R50-53's the lip on the hub is 10mm and if you run a 10mm spacer, there's no more lip for the wheel to center itself. I'm not sure what the distance is on the other models, though. Do your spacers have a lip?

 

What size did you go with? I have seen this complaint more than a few times when the spacers aren't hubcentric. Some brands only make 10mm+ spacers hubcentric. You can see explains of them HERE. Look at the RaceMax 5mm spacer compared to their 12mm spacer.

 

+1 , or rust on the hub , wheel, or rotor hat. Make sure you have the correct spacer for the year, has to be the right Center Bore also.

 

Hubcentric 15mm spacers on 2006 R53.

 

Check the rust and make sure they the correct CB.

 

How's the handling with wheel spacers? Any notable changes from stock?

When I bought my F60 JCW a few months back I need to get winter tires for it. In the end I went with the factory option which they gave me a decent deal on. But before I decided on that I was having a heck of a time finding a wheel that would actually fit on the F60 JCW. No tire shop in town could do anything for me and most online places (TireRack, etc) don't even list the F60 JCW in their systems or when they do there are no compatible wheels. Several local shops called their suppliers and all said that there is no mass produced wheel that will fit over the JCW brakes without spacers. MINI confirmed this (although they might have been pushing me to buy their option) and really cautioned me against using spacers because it would have unknown effects on handling. I considered spacers anyways but without having the car on-hand to measure things wasn't sure what size I would need to make things work.

So for my future reference, is there really any handling problems with using spacers as you guys are?

 

When we installed 20mm on the my R58 JCW and R52 MCC JCW it improved the handling and made it feel a little sharper as the track is now wider. You can feel it in the smaller MINIs, in the new bigger MINIs I have not driven one with spacers,based on the ride is more sedan like I imagine it will be less felt unless you have a tighter suspension. The JCW CM might the tighter to you might feel that change in handling. Use that video guide above to measure for fitment on the wheels. On aftermarket wheels that dont fit without spacers you can tape up the caliper and have someone hold up wheel as close to the caliper and eye up the distance you need ( use a small caliper tool or tape measure) and try to find that gap from the wheel to the top of the rotor hat. Or you can rent out test tool also linked.

We have the Gen 3 F54-F60 wheel spacers here, they fit F60 also.

https://www.ecstuning.com/News/Mini_...Wheel_Spacers/

Test tool https://www.ecstuning.com/b-ecs-part...202ecs03lktkt/

 

Posted in wrong thread

 

I personally would not run them for engineering reasons. Wheel bearings like to be centered in the wheel so that the forces are balanced. Excessively offsetting the wheels alters this relationship and can cause them to wear prematurely. For this reason, I would not do this to a car you drive every day. If you must run them, I would run spacers that have built in studs and bolt to the hub. Just using a spacer between the wheel and hub is a weak setup and can stress the wheel studs or bolts excessively. It will also eliminate the hub centering ring of the original hub and will make the wheel wobble. Whenever you make a change to a rotating part, always look at the underlying engineering that the original designer used to keep things spinning straight and true and figure out if you are going to negatively impact it.