[-GS-]

Originally Posted by anantc93

That is precisely what I have been shouting to the BMW guys!! If I could find some more Sport Shadow owners I could probably get either peace of mind (if their tyres are fine after 6+ months) or better grounds to complain (if they are in the same pond as I am)

Hi Anant,

My 330i M Sport came with 18" Bridgestone Potenza. Been driving around Delhi/NCR for almost a year now without any problems.

[el lobo 6061]

Originally Posted by anantc93

I am in a living nightmare with my new 320d Sport Shadow that I purchased on 17th July, 2018. I had read enough reviews here to understand the lower durability of runflats but I took a conscious decision to go for it anyway, hoping that I would handle it carefully enough, which I think I did. BUT, in less than 4 months and less than 5k kms on the odo, I have had to replace 5 runflats.

Problem is low SIDEWALL height of tyres. Plus your car has staggered setup. 225 45 R18 front and 255 40 R18 rear.

225 45 R18 sidewall translates to 225*45% = 101.25 mm
255 40 R18 sidewall translates to 255*40% = 102.00 mm

Believe me its very less considering the road conditions prevalent in India. Sidewall bulges happens due to impact from pothole.

You would need to baby those tyres and certainly won't be able to enjoy the car as much.

Down size to 17 inch alloys 225 50 R17 = 112.50 mm or better 16 inch ones 225 55 R16 = 123.75 mm.

Your 320d would loose some looks but you would be able to drive it everywhere more worrying lesser. Plus ride would be more comfortable on those 16 inchers.

My X1 comes with 225 55 R17 = 123.75 mm. Pirelli Cinturato P7. Taken it to places rural, state highway and no issues whatsoever. Running tyre pressure recommended by BMW, 32 PSI all round.

On a return highway run in monsoon at night Nashik to Mumbai, encountered potholes and banged into one at 60+ kmph wherein I thought tyre be gone. Reached home, inspected, not issues whatsoever.

[GTO]

Firstly, welcome to Team-BHP . Great to have you onboard. A couple of points:

- Runflats actually have tougher sidewalls than regular tyres.

- Your front tyre size is 225/45 R18 while the rear is 255/40 R18. That means your front sidewall is 101.25 mm in height, while the rear is 102 mm . That is INSANE! This is simply the wrong size for India...an awful choice by BMW. I would recommend you to check if taller profile tyres can fit on your car. My 18" tyres have ~110 mm sidewalls. The 18" Continentals have proven so robust that I got a 2nd set at the time of replacement! Over 50% of my driving is on the highway, so an odd bump or pothole taken at speed is a regular affair.

- Clearly, Goodyear Runflats don't suit your driving style or Indian roads or both. Have BMW switch you over to Continentals.

- The best solution would be to downsize the rims to 17". That will give you better ride comfort & more robust tyres. You could also get regular tubeless which are superior to runflats in many ways.

[Akshay1234]

Wow that's a lot of sidewall tears, and not such low profile tyres. Since your tyres have been changed, I'm guessing even if the earlier ones were defective, these new ones won't be. I guess its just a matter of being more careful over all kinds of bumps, don't get the vehicle fall into any pothole. So with runflats having a stiffer sidewall, they normally take more of a beating than the tubeless, and when its too much then they just tear at the sidewall like we can see in your tyres.

[Blooming Flower]

I believe, Goodyear has no manufacturing problem with these RF tyres, or especially for any particular batch. As per the attached copy of email to BMW, it is clear that the TPMS reading was not correct all the time. It further raises doubt whether all the tyres were with perfect inflation pressure all time while the car was on move. I understand, the car is taken care of very well and driven gently with all precautions and the pressure was checked as well as adjusted at regular interval. It is noteworthy to investigate where or which roads in NCR the car plied on. That can substantiate quite well what I am presuming. But, I can safely assume if the brand is even swapped to Michelin instead of Goodyear with the same tyre size, the same problem may reiterate as such low profile tyres are not really suitable for Indian roads yet. RFTs have evolved a lot since their inception but there exists manifold scopes for further improvement for suitability to our road condition. A downsized, higher aspect ratio, tubeless seems to be the ad hoc solution to the issue.

[venkyhere]

Originally Posted by anantc93

I agree with you, but it was difficult to convince my father to switch to tubeless, especially because BMW voids the warranty if you switch away from runflats. My father has finally agreed that it would be the last resort.

I don't know what to call this behaviour - insouciant, arrogant or stupid. My sympathies. Looks like you missed noticing the tyre dates during your PDI. I raised hell when my mint-fresh-from-factory car came with 1 year old tyres (regular 16" tubeless apollo), they agreed for some discount and I swapped those for new michelins right out of the showroom. I would suggest you move away from runflats and get BMW to get down from their high horse regarding voiding warranty. They are just reading from a rule book written for europe. This is india.

[naikameya]

Run flats are a classic case of innovation in technology and without humanizing it. If one has to baby a car around so much then it defeats the purpose. If I am BMW, I would rather have a dynamic tyre pressure maintaining system.
While one can agree it is an old tyre which added to the problem, but does that mean a run flat is useless after a year of existence?

[quickdraw]

I had the exact same problem on my 328i with 18 inch runflats and have covered it extensively on my thread. This whole thing seems like a scam to me. Expensive secure insurance and garbage tires without any warranty help. You would get better support from a tire dealer selling you grey market tires than what BMW dealers provide on overpriced tires. No matter how careful I was I always had a sidewall buldge every few months. All of this went away after I switched to tubeless and they improved the ride quality immensely.

I would suggest find the right upsize for your tire to increase sidewall a little bit and change all 4 tires to Pilot Sport or any other decent tubeless you'll be surprised and you won't have to baby them around this badly. I didn't even have the spare wheel kit on mine but junking the runflats has been the best decision on the Mini and F30. Let me know if you need help with finding the right size/model here in NCR I have done a disproportionate amount of research on this

[anantc93]

Originally Posted by aah78

If you really want, you can go down to 17", which will improve ride & give you a larger sidewall, hence, softer ride.

Can't make out the rear but should be the same, unless you have a staggered wheel setup, in which case it'll probably be 245 or 255 with a 40/35 profile on 18" wheel.

I checked the Bimmerpost forums & saw a couple of posts have had the same issue with this same model & size of tyre in other countries, as well.

You'll probably do a lot better if you just scrap these things & get a different brand.

It is indeed a staggered setup. Seeing everyone's advice here, I am seriously considering downsizing to 17" rims.

Originally Posted by el lobo 6061

Down size to 17 inch alloys 225 50 R17 = 112.50 mm

Precisely what I am planning to do now, considering everyone's advice here.

Originally Posted by GTO

- Your front tyre size is 225/45 R18 while the rear is 255/40 R18. That means your front sidewall is 101.25 mm in height, while the rear is 102 mm . That is INSANE! This is simply the wrong size for India...an awful choice by BMW. I would recommend you to check if taller profile tyres can fit on your car. My 18" tyres have ~110 mm sidewalls. The 18" Continentals have proven so robust that I got a 2nd set at the time of replacement! Over 50% of my driving is on the highway, so an odd bump or pothole taken at speed is a regular affair.


- The best solution would be to downsize the rims to 17". That will give you better ride comfort & more robust tyres. You could also get regular tubeless which are superior to runflats in many ways.

Downsizing the rim size makes most sense since that's what everyone's saying. I hope the snobs at BMW don't void the warranty for that, at least.

Originally Posted by Akshay1234

I guess its just a matter of being more careful over all kinds of bumps, don't get the vehicle fall into any pothole

If I see a bump I make sure to slow down to less than 5kmph, the first incident with the runflats has trained my muscle memory enough for that! But the roads in Gurgaon don't really make it possible to not let the vehicle fall into any pothole at all.

Originally Posted by Blooming Flower

It is noteworthy to investigate where or which roads in NCR the car plied on. That can substantiate quite well what I am presuming. But, I can safely assume if the brand is even swapped to Michelin instead of Goodyear with the same tyre size, the same problem may reiterate as such low profile tyres are not really suitable for Indian roads yet. RFTs have evolved a lot since their inception but there exists manifold scopes for further improvement for suitability to our road condition. A downsized, higher aspect ratio, tubeless seems to be the ad hoc solution to the issue.

Except for the Golf Course Extension road in Gurgaon which has deteriorated at magnificent pace in the last 8 months, the car is usually only driven on highways (Delhi-Gurgaon for north campus runs, Gurgaon-Faridabad for going home, and once Gurgaon-Rishikesh which did include a bad patch of 30-40 kms around Haridwar, Roorkee). Downsizing seems like the safest option to me as well.

Originally Posted by venkyhere

I don't know what to call this behaviour - insouciant, arrogant or stupid. My sympathies. Looks like you missed noticing the tyre dates during your PDI. I raised hell when my mint-fresh-from-factory car came with 1 year old tyres (regular 16" tubeless apollo), they agreed for some discount and I swapped those for new michelins right out of the showroom. I would suggest you move away from runflats and get BMW to get down from their high horse regarding voiding warranty. They are just reading from a rule book written for europe. This is india.

I wish I had this knowledge while buying the car, I tried to do as much research as possible on things to check but wasn't aware of this.

Originally Posted by naikameya

If one has to baby a car around so much then it defeats the purpose. If I am BMW, I would rather have a dynamic tyre pressure maintaining system.

Feels! In fact, this babying around has led me to not drive the car in Gurgaon at all, I usually just take a cab with a sunken heart.

Originally Posted by quickdraw

I had the exact same problem on my 328i with 18 inch runflats and have covered it extensively on my thread. This whole thing seems like a scam to me. Expensive secure insurance and garbage tires without any warranty help. You would get better support from a tire dealer selling you grey market tires than what BMW dealers provide on overpriced tires. No matter how careful I was I always had a sidewall buldge every few months. All of this went away after I switched to tubeless and they improved the ride quality immensely.

I would suggest find the right upsize for your tire to increase sidewall a little bit and change all 4 tires to Pilot Sport or any other decent tubeless you'll be surprised and you won't have to baby them around this badly. I didn't even have the spare wheel kit on mine but junking the runflats has been the best decision on the Mini and F30. Let me know if you need help with finding the right size/model here in NCR I have done a disproportionate amount of research on this

I will definitely need to get in touch with you once I have some response from BMW on what options they are giving me.

• Currently, downsizing seems like the best bet. I will have to check for how big of a hole it's gonna be to replace the rims on 4 alloys and 1 donut.
• Other than that, I could either try my luck with a different brand, same profile (because I'm guessing that's what BMW would try to make me go for, it would probably be the most convenient for them)
• Or I could hope for a miracle and have a different brand with wider profiles work out.

[dinu2506]

My experience with runflats have been pretty good. I have a X1, 6th year now, 42000km on the clock, still running the original GoodYear Runflats 225 50 R17. Apart from the punctures due to nails and stuff, I never had any issue with them during this entire tenure. Used to maintain 33 front and 39 rear.

[anantc93]

Yep, I agree, I am not against runflats in general. I knew and had researched about them before making the purchase. My problem is with the runflats in this specific variant of the 3-series which are not holding up even for a few months, neither in my vehicle, nor in the other random same variant purchased in August 2018 that I saw parked at the dealership. Easy to say to manage around potholes better but if this is happening again and again, over a period of just 3 to 4 months, with 2 different cars of the same variant, something has to be wrong on the vehicle's side.

[shrjun]

Those tyres look curbed or road damaged.I was on the factory Dunlops for 35k kms without any damage or punctures and have just shifted over to Michelin PS3 ZPs which have run another 10k with no issues.I wouldn't be whacking any car through potholes regardless of manufacturer claims of the car's capabilities.


I tend to baby mine due to the lowish profile tyres

[rejoycjohn]

I have runflats on my car, other than a flat tyre incident the experience with runflats have been generally trouble free. The car came with Continental Contisport Contact5 SSR on both axles from the factory and the ones on the rear lasted around 48000KMs and 2 years. The profiles on mine are quite low with a 225/40 R18 at the front and 245/35 R18 at the rear. Even though I try to avoid the big potholes some of them you just cant avoid and you end up just hoping for the best with fingers crossed.

I think In your case, a bit of bad luck and a bad batch of tyres definitely played a part. So its worth changing the brand to continental or something else before downsizing all the 4 tyres and alloys. You could even think of changing the tyres to non run flats if BMW agrees.

[drmohitg]

I had the Bridgestone RFTs on my 320d (16inch wheels) and used them for a good 40k kms without any issues whatsoever. I think the problem in your case is the size of the alloys allowing for thinner side profile tyres. Regardless of the looks, it goes without saying that these sizes are not suited to our roads specially Gurgaon which can put moon to shame when it comes to the roads.

I would suggest either you two options, both of which would require putting in money out of your pocket:
1. Shift to regular tubeless set ups. They are much more abuse friendly. But do know that your car will lose any suspension related warranty. If a problem occurs, BMW might offer you some goodwill warranty but for all practical purposed, assume that it would be from your pocket. Secondly, after driving on RFTs for 40k kms, I felt the fun element decreased significantly with the non RFT tubeless set up which made the car's ride very soft and akin to my Corolla Altis. My parents love it, I hate it.

2. Opt for new alloys, a size lower and that should also probably help your cause. I would even suggest combining that with a change of tyres too with a size more suitable to our roads.

Do pick either option. It is painful to invest more money into an already expensive car. But if you do not do it, the way your tyres are giving way, sooner than later you will start hating the car.

[abishek2222]

After changing 5 RFT tyres for bulges over 20k Km and claiming insurance every time , Switched to Continental tubeless and the problem never happened again.