I only have 2500 miles on my car but last Saturday the flat tire warning came on. I was driving to work in the city where my dealer is so took the car there thinking I would leave it and get a loaner car. Ha. No service people there at all and no loaner car. Monday I went to Discount Tires and they found a nail in a tire but did not have a replacement. So they had to order it and I did not get it until today. I drove to work and back with the tire with the nail in it for four days. I checked the air every morning. I guess this is the advantage of run flats but the total price of a new tire was $322. That does not make me happy.

Also last week I took a left turn into a fast food place and suddendly I could not make the car move more than a few miles per hour. I stopped the car and turned off the motor. I turned the motor back on and drove around the parking lot a few times and things seemed okay. But this really scared me. Wonder if it happened on a freeway. Any suggestions of what could have caused this? ski

 

Your tire woes with the dealer are odd. Yah Run-flats cost a bundle. As for the car moving slowly that might of been the "Limp-home" mode I have heard so much about. As I understand it kicks in when the car is pushed to hard or something breaks and its the engines way of not makingthings worse. Similar to when you get a cut you put a bandaide on it.

 

So the tire was holding enough air to get you to work and back? Was the nail in the sidewall, or did they just say that they couldn't repair it because it was a runflat?? Shouldn't have to replace the tire unless the puncture was in/near the sidewall.

 

Yeah, isn't that a wonderful feature? That's happened to me several times and is the reason I turn the ASC DSC or whatever the heck it is off whenever I drive the car. What most likely happened is that your ever-so-smart electronics determined that one of your front wheels lost traction (were you hurrying to get into the driveway, or maybe hit a spot of oil that could have caused your wheel to spin?) and knowing far better than we organic units what to do in that situation, electronically killed your power (I don't know if it bleeds off boost, retards timing, or builds a cheese sandwich, I do know it's going to kill me one day if I don't defeat the blasted thing) to a butt-dyno guess of maybe thirty horsepower. Enough to crawl up a gradually sloping driveway, but not enough to get away from that oncoming bus.

I like ABS brakes most of the time and I'm neither a troglodyte nor a Luddite, but I'd like to have a serious, loud, and lengthy discussion with the engineer who decided that when I'm pulling out into six lanes of oncoming traffic in a big hurry what I really need is about the same amount of horsepower as my starter motor.

Not that I have any strong feelings on the matter, you understand.

 

Builds a cheese sandwhich!

Ha ha ha! I'm laughing because I feel the exact same way that you do. I turn mine off quite a bit...more than I should probably.

-Loren

 

I question the cost and having to pay for the tire. My 2003 MC had run flats and I found a small slice in the sidewall, I took it to Goodyear, they looked at and said ok we will order you a new tire, I asked the cost and they stated since I only had 8k and it was less than a year old it would be a warranty claim, cost me $0.00. Took a week for the new tire but when it came in the changed it, rebalanced the wheel and remounted. I would go back to Discount and find out why they charged you.

 

Our minis are highly advanced vehicles. The purpose of the ASC and Run flat lights are to alert the driver and not damage the car.

If you flip your ASC toggle your car will again be driveable. If it is serious you can resest this by holding your ASC toggle while starting your car, this cancels the mode.

I had a horrible wreck in my first MCS and the limp home mode activated along with my 3 airbags on the driver side, interior lights and emergency flashers. I was in the middle of a 4 lane interstate and the car was clearly not driveable. The limp mode allowed me to moved the car without damaging it further and thus get to a safe location on the side of the road.

If you have the option, DON'T DRIVE YOUR CAR!

Also, I have found that Mini Service centers are not the nicest people (exception in Atlanta, the RULE in Tampa Bay's Ferman). The service dept typically look at Mini owners as less than BMW owners and thus don't give much regard even though most of us have MCS's that cost as much as BMW's.

Good Luck

 

yeah ditto the cheese sandwich stupid ASC.....

 

Doesn't Ian (who builds the auto-up circuits) also have one that disables the dsc automatically on start up? Of course, you can hit the switch and turn it back on, if you'd like.

 

Dealerships do not service the warrantee on tires. The tire manufacturer does. Be sure to check your paperwork you got with your car and there'll be something for your tires.

If you take it to the dealership, they will truthfully tell you that roadhazards are not covered under warrantee (their warrantee that is!). Then they'll offer to sell you a new tire and charge you installation costs. Remember, they're in the repair business to make money.

 

I had a screw puncture my driver side front run flat, on the road surface, not the sidewall. I went to Big O Tires and they were able to seal the wound. No problems since!

BTW, the guys at Big O were so in awe of the MINI, they fixed it for free!

When it's time to replace my tires, I think they will get my business!

 

Same experience here with Discount Tire. Unless the puncture is in the side wall of the runflat they can be repaired. I have heard that this will also lower the rating of the tire, which is really of no concern to me, I usually don't drive at 135MPH.

 

Thanks for all of the responses. The manual says the ACS should be on at all times but after this experience I think I will keep it off. I did turn in the drive to the fast food place quickly because of fast oncoming traffic. I do not recall making such a fast turn before with this car.

In terms of the tire, one of the mini service directors recommended Discount Tires as the best place to go. I now wish I had gone to Goodyear since I have their runflats. I have a road hazard policy that I took out when I bought the car. Does that not cover nails which to me are a road hazard. I saw the nail when Discount had the tire off. It was in the center of the tread, had a large head so it probably was a long one. I work 35 miles from where I live and consider myself lucky to have made 4 back and forth trips. I did, however, stay off freeways and took a slower way home and to work. Discount told me they first looked at the tire to see if it could be repaired but decided that it could not be. I wonder how long I could have driven with the nail. I presume that if I had regular tires that when I went to leave for work last Saturday a tire with a nail in it would have been totally flat. I have not had that many flat tires so having one this quick really shocked me. These are the first run flats I have had. ski

 

Its very easy to plug a tire yourself... I had a nail in 1 of mine in the middle of the tread, just pull it out with pliers and follow the diagram on the plug kit (from Pep Boys or some place sim) not a problem since.

You don't even need to take the wheel off actually.....

 

Also, you can go to Discount Tire and buy a road hazard guarantee on ANY set of new (just not too old) for a reasonable price (in my opinion) and it will cover all road hazards.

I would have opted for four non run flats at that price.

Earl

 

I've had LOTS of foreign objects in my tires. Screws actually seal quite well, and nails do sometimes as well. FWIW, any hole in the middle of the tread, unless something took a big core out of it, should be repairable. The nature of the rubber is such that once the object is removed, there's really not a big 'hole' left. Patch it up and you're on your way. You may have had an overzealous salesman.

As an aside, what pray-tell does the 'road hazard' agreement cover, if not nails in tires? The cleaving of the earth, perhaps?

 

I feel for ya... but nails do not, to my knowledge, descriminate between new and old tires or run flat and non- run flat tires. So don't blame the tires -- possibly blame the repair people who didn't offer to patch it.

As far as the road hazard policy, I would assume (and I"ve been wrong before... frequently) that that insures you against things which damage the actual body of the car. A giant lump of tread, for example, which could cause body/alignment damage. As a rule I don't believe that the dealership warranties anything regarding the tires.

Better luck with your new tire :smile:

 

From everything I've read about runflats, its not recommended to fix them.

 

We have run flats on both of our Minis and have never had problems patching them.

Don

 

the first thing I did when I motored off the lot last Oct with my new MCS and its Dunlops was go to Discount and get 4 road hazard/replacement warranties for about $21 each. covers all repairs and rotations. WWI, IMO. J

I agree: for $400 I would've replaced all my R/Fs with convies.

 

good idea.