Pics of Mini with 17" wheels on

Hi Ian,

The 17" wheels are not good in terms of ride quality, the 16" x-lites (or even 5-star) alloys are better over all, that said I have 17" wheels as they're part of the UK Cooper S chili pack! I do want rid of them though, not nice on a daily basis, crashy, tramline, heavy...

Anyway, for some advice on tyre sizes etc, can I direct you here:

Paul

Thanks again Paul and I must admit, I save around £300 by losing an inch on the wheels, which could allow me to put Dynamic Stability Control and ASC+T on and probably Sports seats :o)

What is the difference in handling between the 16's and 17's

As I say, I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to these things.. :)

No problem. The best thing to try to do would be to call in to a dealer who has examples of both and test drive them.

The differences from my experience are the 16" wheels are lighter (and you notice it) and have a marginally smaller overall diameter (wheels and tyres) so you can go and stop easier. They have a wider sidewall, so they give a little more, and the overall handling feel and ride is that bit more 'progressive'. They also are far less jittery on the rough stuff, like country lanes for example. The 17"s can tram line horrendously too.

It depends where and how you drive, but on my old journey to work I found the 17's where a pain in the rear end, while the 16's where a pleasure. Apart from looks I can see no reason to chose the factory 17's over the factory 16's.

Paul

Thanks Paul. :o) Well.. most of my driving will be a 7 mile stretch to and from work with the odd trip out up to the Lakes and North Yorkshire moors in the UK. I tend to try and find the most windy and narrow country lanes I can ;o)).

There will be limited Motorway driving. From what you have told me, I'd be much better off with the 16's purely for an all round good ride but still with immense grip ;o)

Plus I save £380 by losing an inch. That means I can get the Chilli Pack plus Radio Boost. :)

Cheers Ian

For the cost of the boost add on you can get a 3rd party mp3 head unit with more power than the boost and that way you also get the ability to play mp3s which mean 10-12 albums on one CD.

Not sure what you dealer is like but I dropped my head unit off to them and they fitted it to my car before I picked it up so I have sounds from the word go :)

Hope that helps.

I already have a 6 CD Changer, you think that will be compatible with the MP3 head unit?

Also what make and model is yours so I can see what kind of unit or similar I'd be looking at.

The changer takes up far too much boot space, there is little enough to start with. We carry 4 CDRs in the car and that gives us access to a total of 48 CDs at 128bps so good quality. (12 per disk).

The head unit is the Sony CDX-MP40, costs about £150 has 50W output and plays CDRs. It will control changers but only Sony I think. BWM charged £20-30 to fit the head unit before we picked up the car which I felt was fair.

To be honest, I cant see the need for a changer if you go MP3 but some people like to have 6CDRs in a changer full of MP3s. You will need to check that your changer will allow this though.

Hope that helps

Warren