MINI Cooper wheels on Scion = Ut Oh!

As you may remember, I have a thing for putting MINI Cooper wheels on my '05 Scion xB.

When I got my xB, it came with steelies. I ran all the numbers, and checked around online, and determined that MINI 15" wheels would fit and work.

I bought set #1. Ran them until the tires scared me, and bought set #2. Ran those until the tires scared me, then bought set #3.

Trust me on the math. This is WAY cheaper than buying, mounting, and balancing new tires.

So I bolt on set #3, and start to back out of the garage. There was a Bad Noise. Turns out that the wheel design on set #3 is such that the wheels hit the calipers.

Ut oh! Fortunately the wheels took the damage and not the calipers.

Let this be a lesson. Just because the first two sets of MINI Cooper wheels don't hit the calipers, doesn't mean the third set won't!

Well, I had the near-new Pirelli P3000s dismounted from wheels #3 and mounted on wheels #1. So much for saving money on the tire shop.

In good conscience, I could not re-sell the damaged wheels. Got a whopping $20 for them at the scrapyard.

Now I'm stuck with 2 bare MINI Cooper wheels and all 4 center caps to dump. That's much harder than selling a complete set of 4.

Wish me luck, although I'm not sure I deserve it, owing to my own damned stupidity.

Probably easier to sell them individually to someone who just curbed their Mini?

Put Ford Aspire or VW Rabbit rear spindles on your tire trailer and mount the pair on it.

I'm curious to see what they look like.

There is a beat-up Civic coupe in my town that is on a set of them (that is obviously stolen).

These two styles of 15" work on the Scion calipers:

These were the ones that hit the calipers:

gamby wrote: I'm curious to see what they look like. There is a beat-up Civic coupe in my town that is on a set of them (that is obviously stolen).

I don't know about that, I sold off one of my sets to a guy with a Civic. He paid $150 for a set of 4 wheels with nearly expired tires on them, but it was better than what he had on the car.

i'm sure there's a Chump/Lemons team that could use a couple of extra wheels.. and i'm sure the slightly damaged wheels would have worked quite well for them, too.

novaderrik wrote: i'm sure there's a Chump/Lemons team that could use a couple of extra wheels.. and i'm sure the slightly damaged wheels would have worked quite well for them, too.

Like I said, I couldn't sell them to anyone in good conscience. I'm neither a metallurgist nor an engineer, but the deep gouges in the back of each spoke scared the crap out of me, such that I could do nothing with the 2 damaged wheels but scrap them.