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Sedans BMW 3-Series BMW 3-Series Run Flat Tires
2421 messages, Last post on Dec 02, 2009 at 1:06 PM
You are in the BMW 3-Series Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 03, 2007 8:20 am)
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Oct 03, 2007 9:05 am) Regards, OW |
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Replying to: kyfdx (Oct 03, 2007 8:52 am) Regards, OW |
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Reading this post with some amusement for several weeks now. Obviously, most of you have not had a hig speed blowout on a rear wheel, or any wheel for that matter..? I had the bad luck to get a blowout at 80 mph coming out of a tunnel on the PA turnpike years ago. It was all I could do to keep the car on the highway before I managed to get over to the 4 foot wide breakdown lane to change the flat. I wont tell you what a tandem trailer truck feels like passing you at 70-75 mph while you're trying to change a flat tire..you really dont want to know. What you do want, is a run flat tire. Run flat tires allow you to maintain control with a total loss of air pressure..they allow the Directional Stability Control to operate, as well as the Anti Lock Braking system. With a total loss of air, you can travel up to 150 miles to get a repair. With a slow leak, you can travel up to 600 miles to get a repair. If the puncture is more than 3/4" from the sidewall, you can get it plugged for a few bucks. And, the low tire warning lights up to let you know there's a problem! Keep your spare tire, keep your jack, keep your lug nut wrench..I'll keep the Run Flats and keep on driving.
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Replying to: bmwr (Oct 09, 2007 12:52 pm) "I had the bad luck to get a blowout at 80 mph..." Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. That said, tire technology has come a loooong way in the last couple of decades, and blow-outs without some external help (i.e. a road hazard of some sort) are all but non-existent these days. That said, if you do hit a piece of road junk that destroys your tire, it is highly unlikely that RFTs will help you all that much, if at all. "Run flat tires allow you to maintain control with a total loss of air pressure..they allow the Directional Stability Control to operate," Stability control and ABS on a late model BMW work just fine even of one or more tires have zero pressure and are of the GFT variety. "With a total loss of air, you can travel up to 150 miles to get a repair." Ummm, no. The recommendation is no more than 50 miles. "With a slow leak, you can travel up to 600 miles to get a repair." That's a bizarre statement if I've ever seen one. Geez, I've driven thousands of miles with a slow leak on GFTs. Stop, fill'er up every so often and continue on your way. "If the puncture is more than 3/4" from the sidewall, you can get it plugged for a few bucks." Only if you can find someone willing to do it. FWIW, most (if not all) BMW dealerships will refuse to do this kind of repair. "Keep your spare tire, keep your jack, keep your lug nut wrench..I'll keep the Run Flats and keep on driving." Keep your RFTs with their clumsy handling, bone jarring ride and short tread life. I'll gladly take a spare and a jack with me any day. Best Regards, Shipo
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Replying to: shipo (Oct 09, 2007 1:47 pm) +1. Don't forget that it also costs about twice as much to have a RFT mounted. |
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Replying to: shipo (Oct 09, 2007 1:47 pm) Hopefully RFT or the new Michelin tireless technology will obviate this roadside practice off the face of the earth!  Regards, OW
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 10, 2007 3:49 am) I think a better solution is to look for a better place to pull off the road. If there isn't one, I'd rather destroy the rim by riding on it for a while, as opposed to destroying my driving enjoyment by riding on RFTs all the time. 
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Replying to: bdkinnh (Oct 10, 2007 5:36 am) Alternately, you just stop! Probably, you will get hit. Some people stop on the bridge and the maniacs passing by threaten them just for causing traffic delays. At the end of the day, the technology needs to improve so you don't need to stop and change a tire. You can't set an appointment for a flat tire. Regards, OW
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Replying to: circlew (Oct 10, 2007 7:10 am) Agreed, but as previously pointed out, if in the highly unlikely event that you get a sudden flat (as opposed to a slow leak that usually allows a number of miles once the TPMS has been triggered), some of us would rather drive until we can safely stop. If the destruction of the wheel is the end result, I just don't see that as a big deal compared with the trade offs of RFTs. The truth of the matter is that RFTs are more expensive than GFTs, often cost more to install, and have generally inferior driving characteristics. In case of my wife and me, we have over seventy years of combined driving experience covering some one and a half million miles in the process. Through it all, the only sudden pressure loss event that either of us has had while we were behind the wheel was when I was driving a 1968 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon. While that event was nervous as I was moving at nearly 80 mph when the right front tire let go, it could have been avoided. The car was my (then) new girlfriend's father's car and I found out right after the event that he didn't believe in changing tires until the tread was fully bald (three out of four tires in this case), and even then all he would buy was retreaded tires. The above isn't to say that we've never had a flat, we've had lots, however, in every other case the flat happened so slowly that we either saw it before getting in for a drive, or were alerted to the fact by the sloppy handling of the car. Obviously the first case is simply annoying, and the second case we've always been afforded enough time to get to a safe place to change it or get it changed. All of this is to say that if I had instead spent the extra money on RFTs (assuming they were available) for those 1.5 million miles, I'm sure we would have spent several thousand dollars more for our tires than we have at this point, more than enough to pay for a few damaged wheels should it ever come to that.  Best Regards, Shipo
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