Aaron:
The Minilite replica sport wheel is a very good, solid wheel. For the
money, they are a great value and are suitable for any kind of street or
competition use. There are a lot of folks running them in vintage racing
and even pro-rally. They do not have steel lug nut seats, which I thought
would be an issue, but the alloy appears strong enough to live happily
without them. I had a set of 15" ones on my MGB GT V6 when the extended lug
studs started to wobble. ALthough the lug seats were chewed up a bit, there
was no catastrophic failure and the wheels were still usable.
The original Minilite and Panasport brands offer a higher quality wheel,
with better finish, polished rims, steel lug nut seats and do tend to be
lighter. But they are a bunch more money. The polished rims are also
susceptable to corrosion, if you live in the salt belt this may be
important.
For the lists general reference:
There are some MGB fitment problems with the replica Minilites bolt on
wheels.
1. 14" There can be interference with some aftermarket tie rod ends which
have a larger body diameter than stock. These will rub the inside of the
wheel.
2. 14", 15" There have been occurences of the MGB front and/or rear hub
castings being out of spec and interfering with the center of the alloy
wheel. MG ran into the same problem when they introduced alloy wheels for
the Anniversary and LE editions. If you check "The Original MGB" the
factory had to do additional machining to the later hubs to correct this
problem. This problem appears most often in the late 70s cars, where I'm
guessing the casting patterns were getting sloppy. Earlier cars seem to
have no problem.
3. 15" If I remember correctly the center of the alloy wheel can be too
small to allow the supplied hubcap to clear around the bearing hub.
The second problem can be solved pretty quickly with a Gibbonizer on the
wheel, however getting the wheel hubs correctly machined would be the best
solution, as if the alloy wheels don't fit the hubs are out of spec.
Just for reference.
Kelvin Dodd
65 MGB Vintage Racecar: 2 sets of 14" Minilite replicas
80 MGB: set of nice Italian Minilite replicas
58 MGA: set of 15" Minilite replicas
58 MGA: set of knock off 15" Minilite replicas
66 MGB GT: set of custom made 15X7 knock off Western Racing Minilite
replicas
58 Magnette: set of 15" Minilite replicas
66 Jaguar 3.8S: wanting a set of real Minilite knockoffs
hmm do you see a trend here?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Whiteman [mailto:aaronw@wsu.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 10:07 PM
> To: MG Mailing List
> Subject: minilite question
>
>
> My rostyles are in bad shape. Once visibly wobbles on the balancing
> machine. Before I rotated my tires, the vibration at 50 mph was bad
> enough to chatter my teeth. Not fun.
>
> So, I am thinking that this would be as good a time as any to get the
> Minilite type wheels I have been wanting for 2 years now[0]. I am
> thinking 15x5.5, so that I can get into a larger selection of tires
> that are only available in lower profiles (I know this will make the
> ride harsher, I can deal with that).
>
> So, which minilite is best?
> Moss sells the replica for $180, I can get it from the Moss
> dealers on
> the list for even less.
>
> I found the importer of minilite wheels (the real thing) that sells
> them at $230 a piece or so (and of course there is always the
> bulk deal
> if that happens again this year).
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