Hit a horrible pothole with my Pirelli run flat. Now I have a bubble in sidewall. Bringing it to a local dealer where they are going to replace it under the Pirelli Run Flat warranty. Since the tires are under a year old. phew I do have to pay up front, but will get reimbursed after they submit it to pirelli.

 

Deleted

 

Did you reply to the wrong thread?

 

Not sure how my post got into this thread. I was responding to another thread. I will edit this out.

 

I would have to respectfully disagree. I just took off my Pirelli Cinturato P7 RFT's of my car, had Pirelli P Zero RFT before them (had to replace a few times due to hitting NY potholes and getting bubbles in the sidewall) and they were one of the least comfortable tires I ever owned. And plus they are extremely expensive for what they are - it cost me $237 at Mavis Tire each time when I needed to replace one 205/40r18 tire (don't have any warranties and Mavis would never honor them anyways).

I now switched to my winter setup, non-RFT Continental Viking Contact 7 (I know they are soft winter tires) and the ride quality difference is night and day. It's like I'm driving a totally different car. It rides so much softer and more comfortable that I couldn't believe it (I was using RFT tires for the past 3 years so I didn't have anything else to compare them with).

I'll never buy RFT tires again that's for sure. The car was riding very harsh with them, I could feel every single tiny crack on the road and I even deflated the tires to like 34-35 PSI from factory recommended 40 PSI to see if it'll ride any more comfortable but no luck. I have a can of fix-a-flat, a tire plug kit and battery operated tire inflator so deal with flat tires and if that doesn't work I get a free towing through my car insurance. YMMV.

 

No way would I risk my life on the side of the road trying to fix/inflate/wait for a tow truck. My safety comes first. Run flats feel great on my 2023 JCW and my wife's 2019 Countryman.

 

Agree to that, I can totally understand it and I was thinking the same for a while. Then I once had a non-RFT tire blow out while being some 10 miles away from home and I continued driving slowly and was able to get back home safely. I also could've driven for a few minutes to get off the highway onto a safer side street and replace it there if I only had a spare tire. But anyways, I can totally understand the concern here, especially for the wife's safety, and your own too. I once replaced a tire on my Audi S4 on the side of a road and even though I had a glowing red triangle and those 3 flashing red pucks that I put at 20, 40 and 60 yards away from my parked on the side of the road car, there were still some people that wouldn't see it and were braking hard just before them and swerving around. I would definitely never do that again, it's either some side street away from the highway or driving slowly to home or the closest tire shop.

 

I've had multiple Bridgestone Driveguard tires (not the Plus version, notably) go from fine to sidewall tear at the rim or from fine to sidewall bulge to sidewall tear at the rim, all at the hands of potholes (one of those potholes on a US Interstate at normal Interstate-traveling speeds).

For those unclear on the implications of a sidewall tear, an RFT with one of those is just as dangerous to be driving on, or to have develop that tear at high speed, as a non-RFT tire.

Personally, I'll take "side of the road risk" over ending up smack in the middle of tire-blowout-while-driving dynamics any day of the week. And I don't mean to minimize the risk of the side of the road thing -- rather, I'm saying that the notion that RFTs categorically mitigate that risk while not setting up different risk, just as dangerous if not moreso, is questionable at best. I literally have had four danger-style-dead RFT tires within the last 18 months to prove the point.

"Choose your poison" and the particulars of one's own circumstances would seem to be the fundamental truth of it all (sadly).

FWIW, currently on an experiment that may or may not mitigate my experience to date: replacing the stock 205/45R17s with 205/50R17s. That little bit of extra sidewall height may be the difference that at least this particular make/model/rim size combo needs. The 205/50s are also Bridgestone Driveguard Plus vs non-Plus, but I have no way to know whether that will make a material difference.

 

^That's exactly what I did too for my winter wheel/tire setup - I used the 17 inch wheels instead of 18 and got those Continental Viking Contact 7's in 205/50-r17, great setup so far, love it.

 

That's awesome to hear! Cool!