Best In Show: Clark Takes Top Honors at Mickey and MINI 11

For the past eleven years, I have joined other MINIacs at the Walt Disney World Resort for the annual Mickey & MINI event that takes place each September. This year’s festivities were awesome and everyone had a fabulous time! If you haven’t had a chance to make it to a Mickey & MINI, you really need to plan on coming next year.

Video Credit: “bones0393

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Found: A Wheel That Clears The F56 JCW Brake Kit

First off, a HUGE thank you is in order to Jerry at NM Engineering for going above and beyond in assisting in this project.  When I first went looking for aftermarket wheels for the F56 JCW Brake Kit, I didn’t realize how much of a challenge it would be to find ANYTHING available in the after-market.  Every option that I found required spacers to push the wheel out enough to clear the massive Brembo calipers of the JCW Brake Kit.  As I described in part 1 of this project, Jerry agreed to get his hands on a JCW Brake Kit himself and install it on the NM Engineering test F56 to see what could be done to bring to market a wheel that would clear the brakes without the need for spacers. If you recall from part 1 of this project, Jerry was going to enlarge the center bore and reseat the lug holes of the NM Engineering 8″ wide VW spec wheels so that they are perfectly matched to MINI spec (66.5mm and canical seat lugs). After various test fittings, here are the options that are available for customization to clear the JCW brakes: Continue reading Found: A Wheel That Clears The F56 JCW Brake Kit

Challenge: Finding a Wheel That Clears the F56 JCW Brake Kit

Hop on any MINI Cooper forum these days and I bet you that you will find MINI owners trying to figure out what after-market wheel options exist for the F56 John Cooper Works MINI.   Try going to TireRack.com and searching for compatible wheels that will fit a 2015 John Cooper Works Hardtop 2 door and you will come up empty.  The lack of after-market wheel choices is surprising.  Of course, the issue is that the JCW Brake Kit includes MASSIVE brake calipers that even required MINI to develop 2 versions of some wheels to make sure the JCW versions were bowed out enough to clear the massive stoppers (talk about confusing)!

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