OK, so having read all the horror stories about RFT failures only AFTER purchasing my 528xi, I regretted that my additional winter wheels&tires set are also RFT-based...
Until last night, when I was driving home from a long travel. The last part of the trip was in the dark, it was raining heavily, and the road - a very poor and narrow, local road from the communist era in Poland. Traffic very heavy; a huge TIR lorry driver coming the opposite direction was doing silly things and literally swept my away from the road; to avoid a head-on collision I had to move away so that my right side wheels left the asphalt for a moment. When returning back, I heard a rather hard noise, and immediately knew I have a problem
Today at the dealer's, it turns out that both wheels' the inner rims are bent. The tires (Dunlop 245/45R18) didn't loose pressure though, and no bubble appeared...
I'm wondering 2 things:
- would the regular (non-RFT) tires survive the impact big enough to bend the wheels?
- if no bubble is visible now, can I rest assured the tires indeed are intact, or will a bubble develop with time?
Opinions welcome; this is my first car ever on RFTs, so my experience is none. Will appreciate your input
PS. Should have added that my service took care of repairing the wheels; my only problem now is whether I can trust the tires after such a mishap...
When your dealer took off the tires, did they notice anything unusual about the sidewalls in the interior of the tires? If not, then you should be fine, sometimes sidewall bubbles doesnt show up immediately, I would keep an on it the next few days.
RFTs have a stiffer sidewall than non-RFTs. Therefore, according to my tire dealer, they are less likely to collapse and allow the rim to hit the pavement. However, it is possible that you bent the wheels by hitting the pavement/shoulder transition in a sideways motion as you returned to the pavement. In that case, tire collapse was not involved.
Bubbles are caused by pinching the tire between the wheel and the pavement when the tire collapses. Besides bending the wheels, this can cut a belt on the inside of the tire which creates a path for air to leak into the sidewall thus creating a bubble. My experience with eight bubbles is that they always are observable right after the hit. However, sometimes they are hard to observe. Sometimes they grow in size. Note that bubbles can not be observed when the tire is removed from the wheels since there is no air pressure to create the bubble.
I would guess that it is possible to weaken the inner belt but not create a leak that causes a bubble. Over time the weakened inner belt might deteriorate further and leak as it is stressed with normal day to day driving activities.
If you remove the tire from the wheel the cut in the inner belt can be observed, but it is sometimes very difficult to see. Your dealer should have checked for that when he removed the tires to fix the wheels.
Hi @radarguy - you have very precisely described the way I ruined my wheels (and I mean "ruined", as one of them is bent beyond repair - so my service is saying ).
You say that on a disassembled tire, a cut in the inner reinforcing belt can be observed; is there any special method to do it if it's not seen with a naked eye? Cause obviously - if I have to invest in a new wheel - putting a weakened tire on it can not only be dangerous in driving, but also ruin the new rim....
My only experience is looking at tires when they were pulled by the tire shop and they showed me the cut. I probably would not have noticed them otherwise. They had to circle the cut with chalk in order to get warranty compensation from Goodyear when they returned the tire. It would help if you could relate the tire position to the bent rim since the tire damage would be right under the bent rim.
Since warranty compensation on different tires depend on whether it was caused by a defect or a road hazard, tire shops determine whether the bubble is due to a manufacturing defect or road hazard by looking for the cut. They seem to be pretty experienced at it.
Just to update you guys, but above all - to ask for some reassurance...
It turns out that one of the wheels (the rear one) is beyond repair, says my dealer, and I need a new one. The front one has been repaired, but all this poses a question:
- where is the old BMW quality?!!!
With my old E46 I remember lots of similar minor collisions with road obstacles (potholes, curbs, or high pavement/shoulder edges). Never even once did I have to repair (not to mention replace) a wheel or tire, and I also had low-profile sets (225/4517R). Over the weekend, I've kept telling myself: s**t happens, it will soon be repaired and I'll forget about it, and enjoy my ride again - but somehow, I'm afraid I'll never be as confident with my F10 as I used to be with the E46...
Because you see - even though in my OP here I described the situation quite dramatically (my use of English is of course limited) - the entire "accident" was not that dramatic at all, and considering the average Polish road conditions, it won't be long before I have to visit the road shoulder again... It happened many times with my previous BMW with no consequences. It happened once with my new and beautiful F10 - and so much damage! It may as well prove the 2 ruined wheels are not the only consequence - if one of them was bent beyond repair, I suspect the tire also suffered.
Somehow I'm beginning to think about my F10 like its only virtue was the looks of it. Could someone comfort me?
Thanks - too expensive option for me at the moment (as I need to buy and/or repair two wheels, anyway).
I'm new to RFTs, so a question to all those more experienced:
- should I have had non-RFTs at the moment of the mishap described above, do you think it would be the tires suffering most, and the wheels would have remained intact?
I totally understand, but the longer you have RFT's, the longer your gonna run into problems. As to your question, no one can really tell. But it's less likely that this would've happened with Non-runflats on.
But tires are the only contact to the road surface and it depends on the road that you are driving how long it will take to get a nail or hit a pothole etc. It will happen eventually.
The RFTs are much less forgiving than the regular tubeless tires in any given situation. I have had regular all season performance tires on my Infiniti for the last 3 years and I have hit many potholes, debris on the road etc., which would have destroyed the RFTs on my 535 for sure. But nothing happened as the tires absorbed the impact much better than the RFTs.
My advice for the future would be to get a set of regular non-RFT tires (if you can) and the car will feel smoother and the ride and handling will be much better (I know it from a couple of friends' cars).
The only issue after that is whether to carry a tire foam for any flat or have roadside assistance.
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