It is always winter now. (Advice needed)

"CompactLuxuryFan" (compactluxury)
03/10/2019 at 20:19 • Filed to: None

Looks like the end of the road for my front left tire. I think the wheel may have made it out okay . There’s no visible damage to it. It happened not even on a pothole, just a normal road seam! Felt it all the way in my soul. Happened c oming back from Hooptiecon/Radwood , of which pictures below.

Now here’s the conundrum I’m faced with:

The car has been riding on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! run-flats that came with it, a nd they’ve been good to me. I’m more than satisfied with dry grip for driving around and they’re okay in the wet. To be honest, I had assumed they were summer tires until I went autocrossing a couple of weeks ago and 1) noticed the M+S designation and 2) was very disappointed in their autocross performance.

Since then, I had decided to switch to summer tires and probably non-runflats when the time came. No sense in getting rid of perfectly good tires prematurely. However, this unfortunate event puts me in a difficult position. I don’t even know what my options are.

Should I try replacing just the single tire? It’s one of the front ones, which means it’s 225/40RF18. TireRack has them at an eye-watering $225 a pop.

C ould I swap out just both fronts? In that case, I would probably not go for the DriveGuards. However, i s it okay to have summers in front and all-seasons in the back ? N on-RFs in front and RFs in the back? What do I even need to buy to run non-RFs in a car without a jack?

The two summer options I’m looking at are !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Michelins seem to be slightly better but way more expensive. I think I’d be very happy with the Contis. I run ExtremeContact DWS 06s on my A4 and they’re great.

So here are the current options:

1 front Bridgestone DriveGuard: $225.99

2 front Bridgestone DriveGuard: $451.98

2 front Continental ExtremeContact Sport: $329.98

4 staggered Continental ExtremeContact Sport: $707.96

Some other brand for fronts or all?

What say you, oppo?

Radwood pics for your time. I didn’t really spend much time there because I had thought is was the last weekend of March so I didn’t plan on attending. I did not meet up with anybody.

Seems to have been a lot of foot traffic around this one earlier in the day, based on the muddy prints.

DISCUSSION (6)

cbell04 > CompactLuxuryFan
03/10/2019 at 20:41

You try Craigslist to see if someone is getting rid of a couple used ones that might match the wear on yours? Might be worth it to just get by until you make a plunge on a full set.

facw > CompactLuxuryFan
03/10/2019 at 21:33

Which car is this? If it’s not AWD, you can probably get away with just replacing the one, though I’d really want at least a matching pair. For AWD, you need all four to match. If you want a match without replacing two tires, you have two options, look for a used tire or get a new tire shaved to match your others. The latter is a good option your other tires still have good tread, but it’s probably not worthwhile to shave a tire down to 6/32 or whatever.

CompactLuxuryFan > facw
03/10/2019 at 21:46

It’s an E90 BMW 335i, so rear wheel drive. The tires are staggered, 225/40R18 up front, 255/35R18 out back. I think I may well go for a new one of the same and have it shaved down. Last inspection in November had all four tires at 8/32.

shop-teacher > CompactLuxuryFan
03/11/2019 at 00:01

That's probably a good idea.

CompactLuxuryFan > cbell04
03/11/2019 at 21:42

I actually ended up searching Craigslist for “Bridgestone Dri veGuard” and by some miracle a guy was selling just one near-new exactly matching tire, about 15 minutes from my house, for $100. What are the odds??!

Perhaps even more miraculously, the seller even promptly replied to my text and didn’t end up being a weirdo!

After much waffing betwee going for 2 summers in the front or just the one new one, I decided to go the simpler route and go pick up t he tire. He even mounted and balanced it and disposed of the old one for $35. So now I ave ~3/32 thread mismatched fronts but I can’t tell a difference.

Thanks for the advice!

cbell04 > CompactLuxuryFan
03/11/2019 at 23:20

Nice! I've pulled this move a couple times and been lucky. Not always though I once searched for my odd size tire for our extra vehicle for months to end up finally buying a brand new set of 4 when I gave up and you know what happened next the damn tires popped up on Craigslist the next week.. glad it worked out for you!