Comments on: Reasons to have regular tires on your BMW – Part II

By: lenmakya

lenmakya — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:13:29 +0000

Always monitoring your tires’ tread patterns is an essential part of keeping your automobile safe. Check your tires for undulating cups or scallops along the outside edges and feathering are some of the important tests that should be done regularly. Look for second-rib wear and keep your tires inflated to their manufacturer-recommended air pressures.

By: Horatiu B.

Horatiu B. — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:42:11 +0000

I might do an experiment one of these days and swap out my RFTs for normal tires and do an extensive test drive. I’m wondering how soon I will notice the difference

By: Lance

Lance — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:30:17 +0000

@Miles Ransom: But have you enquired what the implications are should the tyre burst, would insurance even pay out? All tyre brands and manufacturers of RFT void the warranty of the tyres after you have repaired them and they deny any liability should anything happen.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:16:37 +0000

@M: At this rate, all of them

By: mlg2ca

mlg2ca — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:15:12 +0000

No problems with running non-RFTs: that’s what I did on my MINI when I go to the track.

By: M

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:09:50 +0000

can someone list which BMW models come with and without RFTs. I know the 2009 5 series without sport pkg has regular tires.
Also, do we know which 2010 models are expected to have regular tires.

By: B. Riley

B. Riley — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:34:35 +0000

Hahahaha!!!! I WISH a tire would go 50,000 miles for me. half that would be AMAZING.

By: rcm3

rcm3 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:30:21 +0000

I’d be curious about the outcome when owners switch from RFTs to non-RFTs. Did any alarms/warnings go off inside the car?

I’d also be interested in more info about spare-tire bays being included in any new models? If BMW is selling cars with space for a spare anywhere, theoretically part numbers would exist to retrofit those items to your car.

By: KoT-6ereMoT

KoT-6ereMoT — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:27:58 +0000

This tires it’s bullshit. Just try do drive your car on the bad road, and look what happened with your wheel disk after this

By: tt

tt — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:01:29 +0000

great article. hopefully this will educate some people that rft’s are actually worse than non-rft’s when it comes to performance, and practicality, for that matter.

By: Miles Ransom

Miles Ransom — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:27:41 +0000

run flats tires can be patched anywhere except near the sidewalls

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:15:52 +0000

Is there room for a spare on a 3-series?

By: Mohammed AlMomen

Mohammed AlMomen — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:45:05 +0000

@Craig: space savers limit your speed, but for a non RFT most shops can repair it and you will be back up to speed in no time. For RFTs you can't repair them, you can't find them anywhere

By: bunker

bunker — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:52:08 +0000

I recently replaced my OEM summer performance runflats on my E92 with performance WINTER non-runflats…and the ride is remarkably better – even with the harder compound of the winters.

RFT’s are a joke IMO.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:17:41 +0000

I understand the debate for standard vs runflat but I am not sure how you can give a full size spare to every BMW especially where a lot of drivers run staggared sizes – hence the only option would be to run a space saver with some of the same inconveniances (50mph max, finding repair shop etc) as a RFT.

I do agree though that it should be an option and that BMW should not be able to dictate what type of tyres can be run on there cars.

By: George

George — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:01:15 +0000

I had heard that BMW had trouble promoting their cars without a spare tyre (RFTs instead) in India and for that reason they were “forced” to include it. Can someone confirm?

Also, I have read an article in Bimmer or BMW car magazine, that people who replaced their RFTs with regular tyres, found that the ride quality improved significantly! I can find the article if anyone is interested.

BMW has to take into account that the road quality is different from that found in Germany!