Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

How about a flat plain spacer under your existing rings, a couple of back holding screws if necessary, you may find a wheel spacer to adapt.
ps You could make them from Gauge Plate rather than round bar.

Not sure if this will help but with revolution alloys on my S4 I had to a) shorten the drive pegs on all 4 hubs and b) grind the fins on the rear hub slightly to get the wheels to sit snuggly against the hub face. The drive pin holes in the revolution wheels were not quite deep enough and the dishing on the back of the wheels wasn?t deep enough to clear the fins. I used plasticine/ play dough to figure out what was fouling.

One issue seems to be that Minilite wheels have been made by different manufacturers with different tooling over the years. This thread got my curiosity up and I checked two sets of Miinilites I have had for some years. I fitted them to a new TTR rear hub. When I first got these new hubs I was surprised to find that the buttress stiffeners that run from the hub center out to the drive pegs had been cut back near where they meet the threaded section. I now understand why, this cut back is needed to clear Minilite-type wheels at the center hole. The older set of wheels, purchased in the 90s fit onto the hub with out interference. The newer set, bought about ten years later, do not fit up properly. The difference is in the machining of the wheels in the conical section between the drive peg holes and the wheel's center hole. On the older wheels this conical section has a larger diameter near the peg holes, meaning the conical section was cut deeper, providing more clearance to the hub buttress stiffeners. The difference is noticeable in the distance between the peg holes and the start of the conical section. I think that the newer wheels (the one with the machinist's blue near the peg holes) could be made to fit by spot-facing some material away around the peg holes. The thrust rings also need to be trimmed at the bottom of the section that drops down into the wheel center hole. The rings protrude too far toward the hub and touch the buttress reinforcements.

I?m beginning to think that just buying a new set of wheels will end up being quicker, cheaper and a better solution than machining the hubs or making custom designed lock rings, but before I kill the bank balance I have a couple of questions on the wheels pictured above. Mine look similar to the bottom pictured wheels, the ones without the engineers blue marking. Could you measure the thickness of the central boss part of the wheel, the top ones look to be much thicker, I?m wondering exactly how much thicker. It would be interesting to understand why this part is thicker, have there been any failures of the earlier thinner wheels?
Also, do the wheels have the same inset from the inside face of the central boss to the inner edge of the rim, or has having a thicker central boss effectively moved the wheel outwards?
I can secure my front wheels by machining down my spare hubs but that is not possible for the rear. If I just bought new rear wheels, do the two versions look the same or are there visible differences in the spoke and offset that would show up to the naked eye.
I?m a bit surprised how the new hub has been machined, the sharp corner where it has been relieved to clear the lock ring does not seem to be good engineering practice. I would have gone for the option to machine the lock ring so it did not protrude so far behind the wheel and hence did not hit the webs before the wheel was held tight.

Been on holiday so just catching up with this again, need a solution so the car can go to the trimmers in the next few weeks, cant go with loose wobbly wheels!

This may have been suggested already but another solution may be to machine the back off the standard spinners so they will tighten down further - I believe someone in the UK actually fabricates and sells standard (non 26R) spinners with this modification as a way of reducing the weight of the standard ones ..

Hi
Haven't read all the posts but...
I had this problem years a go and the stainless steel collars were machined wrong.
Anyway took them back to Minilite and had them re-machine the collars. They didn't believe me at first but they did eventually.
This was probably 2013 - 2014 anyway Minilite are a long way from being a "quality" company - big holes in the roof etc
On mine they fitted on the front but had about a 1mm of interference on the rear.

Regards
Steve

Success on the front wheels! The parts all came together today and I reassembled both front hubs.
The solution for me was to buy a spare pair of front hubs off eBay at a good price. Machine 5mm off the thread the spinner goes on, remove the old bearings and clean and paint the hubs before getting my local garage to press in the new bearings (?5 including greasing and putting the seals in). The standard lock rings came back from Spyder today, so after fitting new discs, calipers and green stuff pads it was time to fit a wheel. Yippee it all worked, the wheel was secured tight before the spinner bottomed out on the thread.
Now for the back, I?m planning to mill slots in the lock rings to go over the webs on the hub and hopefully that should sort them out too!

Lock rings modified to fit over the webs on the rear hubs, works fine, rear wheel now secure!

Bigbaldybloke wrote:I?m planning to mill slots in the lock rings to go over the webs on the hub and hopefully that should sort them out too!

Good solution, I like that!

I'm pleased Triple B has found a solution although I really think it is for suppliers like Spyder to have done their homework.

I was planning to fit bolt-on Minilites...is this also such a big headache ?

And whilst I'm asking, has anyone tried out the wheels from RetroRace car which are magnesium Minilite style: https://retroracecar.com/ ?

From memory the PCD is 3.75" (95.25 mm) for the standard Elan, but does anyone happen to know the offset ?

[For running the wheels with original steel hubs, original rear calipers and Girling AR front calipers on a 1965 S2 with 26R wings]