Front wheels wider than the rear?
Turbo Mini Forums

Hello everyone,

I have just fitted 13x7 deep dish minilights to my mini. I measured the width of the fronts wheels from the outer edge of each wheel and it came to 58inchs. Did the same to the rear and it come to 57inches.

Does it matter that the rears aren’t as wide as the fronts? And also why is this?

Would you recommend that I fit spacers on the rear to widen it all or just leave it the way it is?

Many thanks

Miles

What does it drive like?

I don't like putting big spacers on as it only increases bearing wear.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing half of.

It makes the car handle properly.

FWD cars tend to have a narrower rear track and RWD cars a narrower front track.

Look at karts, they alter the balance of handling by adjusting the track.

I have used 5mm spacers on the rear with good effect (for my personal preferance). I found that 10mm made the car understeer too much.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

This is a project so I haven't driven it and won't be for a while?

I just want to get it right first time because I have some carbon fibre miglia arches to go on and I don't want to cut and fit this to the car and then find out that I need to widen the wheels and therefore the arches won't be right.

Miles

I think I'd be tempted to fit the arches with the 5mm spacers fitted, then experiment with and without them.

I'm not sure if fitting the 5mm spacer on the rear is a common mod, so worth maybe listening to others first though.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

If your using Miglia arches with 13x7s then I believe you'll either have to spacer your wheels or cut down your miglias. I use 13x8 Alleycats and even I'm having to cut my arches down. I assume you have drums on the rear, are they spacered?

I was using 3/4" spacers IIRC on my old Mini with sportspack arches and 13x7 Superlites and I used to go through about 3 or 4 sets of bearings a year. I'd personally go with cutting down your arches over spacers but everyone has their own preference.

I'm not sure how to measure understeer, but it definately had more with the 10mm spacers on the rear compared to just the 5mm.

It was a notciable differnce that both me and Ben agreed on (which is unusual when it comes to the handling of the hillclimber).

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

I used to have a much much wider rear track by about 2" each side i love the way my mini handeled like that but it each tothere own )

Drives
-Ford S-max Mk2 Ecoboost
-Rover 100 VVC #2 - track project

Searching is all you need on TurboMinis

I meant in laptimes :)

Ahh. Well I can't remember, we don't tend to record anything other than our best run. But it it was slower then we would have put them back on.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph