Content > Lauri's Mini Cooper S

Choosing the right wheels is always one of the hardest choices when it comes to customizing your car. They are one of the most visible changes outside, and represent your styling eye. I spent an considerable amount of time just browsing around for nice looking wheels, when I finally came across the ASA AR-1 rims. Thanks Kaizu for flooding me with all sorts of references from all over the internet.

I made some photoshops with the wheels fitted on my own car, and the style was just what I was looking for. The next hard choice was the size. I knew that the 17″ would have been the more logical choice, as they fit better and would probably be more comfortable. However, as one carfreak once said – “Always go one inch bigger”. I’ve found his philosophy wise, so I decided to go with a set of 18×7,5″ (ET 38). I immediately had some setbacks, as the only place who sold the wheel was KMDäck, located in Sweden, right on the border of northern Finland. The problem was that for some reason, they were not able to ship anything to Finland. So the only choice was to go there to pickup the wheels (over 700km from Helsinki), or buy different wheels which would have been easier to get here. A carfreak never gives up that easy, he will go to ultimate lengths to get what he wants, especially when it comes to cars or car parts.

I consulted my fellow carfreaks on this matter, and our dear Juti who lives in Oulu (about 100km away from KMDäck), said that he could drive there, pick up the wheels and ship them to me to Helsinki. And he really did do exactly that – he drove there, stuffed the wheels into his M6 and shipped them to me the next day. You really got to love this guy – a true carfreak.

As I finally got the wheels, I was a little disappointed when I found out that the lip of the wheel was only 33mm and not as wide as I had hoped for. Apparently all the wheels in my reference pictures were wider with more ET which also made the lip wider. It bothered me for a while, but I soon learned to live with that. The wheel itself seemed like a good quality product. The ASA is an affiliated company of BBS, which is known for making quality wheels (which is in jeopardy at the moment). I also weighed the wheels just out of curiosity – they were 10,4kg a piece which is also pretty ok.

The white powder coat

I had planned to paint the wheels in white, leaving only the lip and the (fake) bolts as they were. There is nothing wrong with the original color, but I think the white goes very well with Mini’s white roof and mirrors. First I was going to get the wheels painted using normal car paint, but soon found out that regular paint may not be strong enough to last on a wheel. The best result is achieved by powder-painting, which is used mainly in industrial products. I googled for a proper place where I could get this done, and found a place in Vantaa called VTM. They mainly do industrial surface coatings but had also done a couple wheels before. The people there seemed really friendly and were interested in doing my wheels. They also promised to do it very cheap. It’s possible to use different colors, but the cheapest is the basic industrial white. It’s not exactly the same color as the Mini’s white, but you can’t really tell the difference. The first step was that I visited them and my wheels were put trough a special washing line. After this you have to be very carefull not to leave any greace or other filth to the surface.

The process for powder coating is that the object is sprayed with a powder coat, and then put in a high temperature oven to solidify. All the parts that you don’t want to be painted have to be covered with a special 3M tape. The parts are usually sandblasted to get a good surface to paint over, but in my case it would have been difficult, because I didn’t want to paint the lip. You can’t just sandblast only a part of the wheel, otherwise the lip would have had to have been re-machined to get the polished look back. The guy at VTM said that they had previously done the coat on top of the lacquer-layer, and said it would hold very well. It’s more likely that the wheel is destroyed before the paint coat gives up (if ever). We decided to do it on top of the lacquer and cover up the lip. I did all the taping myself, because it takes time and I wanted to do it with care.

Now the fake bolts were a whole different story. As I didn’t want any paint on them, the only option was to remove or cover them up. The first choice of course was to remove them, but the bolt’s head type was unknown to me. I first tried a pretty similar-looking torx, but it didn’t work. If you try to remove a bolt with the wrong tool, you usually end up destroying the base and making it impossible to remove. Again I turned to my friend google, and found a head type called XZN M7, which seemed to be very rare. After hours of calling places trying to find it, I had no luck and decided to give up and try to tape up the bolts. As I mentioned before, the tape is a 3M’s special tape which can stand the oven’s high temperatures . It’s quite strong and not flexible at all which made the taping very interesting . The process was very slow and frustrating, as you have to make sure that there are no gaps and that the tape is properly attached. You also have to keep your hands very clean, there can’t be any grease under the tape or it might not hold. Finishing the first wheel took hours, and I still had three more to do..

I decided to give another shot at removing the bolts. I used a torx with some tape applied on top of it, stuffed it tightly into the bolts base and started turning it slowly, pulling it at the same time. After a few tries I finally did it! The first bolt was now removed. I was a little surprised when I discovered that the fake bolt was PLASTIC with no threads at all. They were just jammed into the holes. After the first one was removed, the rest came off quite easily as I got the hang of it. It’s a good thing I got them removed, as the plastic would have melted in the oven!

After I had finished covering up all the wheels, I took them to be painted and got them back a few days later. I just had to remove the tapes to see how it turned out. When removing the tapes, you have to be careful not to tear off any of the paint with them, as some of the paint will be on top of the tape. The results were great! The coat is nice and shiny, and should be very strong also. The border between the covered and painted area was also pretty good. It’s a bit rough if you take a closer look, but that can’t be seen from further away. Just to be sure, I used some weather-proof glue to attach the bolts back on to the wheels.

As you can see, the operation was not so easy, but the end result was quite a good looking wheel. I have to warn you, this wheel is extremely hard to keep clean, especially as it’s white. The front wheels always get brake dust which is a pain in the ass to remove. After one wash I noticed that I can’t seem to get the wheel clean. I’m afraid that I might have ruined the coat by using too powerful cleaning chemicals. I’m on winter wheels now, but I shall see if I can get them clean again before summer.

Mini center caps

To finish things of, I wanted to replace the ugly ASA center caps with Mini logos. As I couldn’t find any right sized Mini caps, I bought blank caps and decided to get a vinyl sticker on them. A great place to get all kinds of vinyl stickers is GrafxWerks. They can do different sized vinyls and the quality is awesome. They also ship them to where-ever very fast. Thanks Ryan for the great product and good service!

That’s it! I hope this information might come useful. Please feel free to comment or ask about the project.