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Originally Posted by Grover432
Quote:
Originally Posted by dbs600
Anyone ever have difficulty with your dealer when going from run flats to conventional tires?
Service advisor states not able to install conventional tires because car came with run flats. Parts department, however, states able to obtain and sell any tire that fits.
I'm trying to get wheel and tire insurance to replace bubbled run flats with conventional tires, but if I can’t get same now, I'll go through Tire Rack when wheel and tire insurance ends in a month.
Guess I'm wondering if there's any specific rule (BMW's own or otherwise) against dealers installing conventional tires on cars that came with run flats?
Thanks!
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I suspect the dealer has constraints that tire shops or other garages might not. If you blow a tire at high speed with a run flat, you have a margin of safety that you wouldn't have with a non run flat tire. Imagine if the dealer swaps your run flats (original equipment) with non run flats and you blow one on the highway and roll your car. The first thing your estate will say is that the dealership is responsible because he altered your car from the manufacturer's spec and should have known better than to do that.
We are all "engineers" and "experts" here, but the truth is we are (most of us) just everyday enthusiasts who share an interest in our cars, but without technical knowledge. So we don't know what tuning has been done to the suspension and safety features of the car by BMW when they added run flats. We all just assume they put them on to save money and weight to improve fuel mileage, or for some other nefarious reason. Maybe the suspension will react differently in an extreme maneuver if the car is fitted with non run flats? I don't know the answer, but I remember watching an M5 video with the head developer from BMW answering journalists questions about why "this was done or that was done". It was clear that the engineer had reasons well above what the average enthusiast would contemplate. |
On certain things like runflat tires about the only engineering decision made based upon that was the lack of spare tire with the car. I'd love to see a comparison on absolute pressure loss at highway speeds on run flat vs non run flat. My personal thought (like you mentioned I'm not an engineer) would be that the runflat doesn't really provide much added control. If you search for stability of non-RFT on a complete blowout I think you'll find the car is still plenty stable. Not trying to turn this into a run flat vs non rft convo; I still buy RFTs for my wife's BMW. Either way there isn't a valid reason that non RFTs couldn't be put on the OPs vehicle.