10 wheels

[michael wain]

hi guys and girls

after seeing so many minis i now have so many ideas in my head now, im looking to go smaller with my tyres. i have a 1989 minicity e with standard 12"wheels.

my question is as i want to go smaller is it as easy as just changing over to when i get new ones?....i:e will they fit over my brake discs etc? any problems with this?


10 inch rims with fat ass tyres :)

anyways was nice meeting some of you guys over the weekend im sure ill be asking more help over the next year ready for the l2b 2011! watch this space

thanks in advance

michael

[RNRMF]

Hi Michael,

first off, welcome to the forum!

To get 10" wheels on your car you'll need to convert the brakes down to smaller ones. The 'later' cars like yours have 8.4" brake discs, and the little 10" wheels won't fit over the calipers. The most common coversion is to the earlier 7.5" 'Cooper S' disks and calipers. Suppliers like minispares do conversion kits that come in at around £300.
There are other ways to convert to brakes suitable for 10" wheels but I'll save confusing things for now!

[michael wain]

wow £300! ok thats fair enough. im not so technical on these side of things so this is probably a silly question but can i not just swap the whole disc brakes and calipers? would these fit over the bolts etc?

many thanks for the information

michael

[RNRMF]

Just had a quick look and it seems the kits are about £220. Yes, you can swap out for the smaller disks and calipers, you also need the right drive flanges - which is what the kits contain!

minispares: http://minispares.com/Product.aspx?ty=pb&pid=42536&title=
minisport: http://www.minisport.com/mini-spare-parts/info_MS2681.html

[BadgerBaiter]

I did read somewhere that it is possible to fit certain 10" wheels over 8.4" disks... however these are on massively deep dished wheels, and as a result needs all the suspension realigned etc etc

[Georgethesprite]

if you want some 10 inch wheels i have some

[michael wain]

thanks guys this is helping me alot :).

george, what wheels do you have?

[RNRMF]

I did read somewhere that it is possible to fit certain 10" wheels over 8.4" disks... however these are on massively deep dished wheels, and as a result needs all the suspension realigned etc etc

There were some wheels that fit, but nowhere sells them anymore - which should tell you something about them! They had a HUGE built-in spacer so the whole wheel sat outside the caliper rather than over/around it. I believe this huge offset made the steering very 'grabby', they ate wheel bearings at a scarily fast pace, put a lot of pressure on things like balljoints and needed giant wheelarches to cover them.
I have also heard of someone fitting Weller wheels on but they needed to grind a chunk of the caliper away to make them fit! I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be taking an agle grinder to bits of my braking system just to fit some wheels!

[BadgerBaiter]

Ah, glad I am not imagining things!
I think I heard something about Wellers too...
I totally agree... I wouldn't want to be grinding away parts of my braking system at all!

[DrDivall]

I converted Shorty to twin leading edge drum set up to get 10's on,
not a hard job, and as they were servo assisted could get the rear wheels off the ground on heavy braking!