Same here.

Dave

 

Thanks guys! Figured I would give everyone an update, the ONLY place i could find in a 50mile radius was National Tire & Battery, they made me sign a waver and went on with the install. They did a fantastic job and took extra care of my rims, Charged me $22/tire.

What a difference, a completely new car. I hate those flinstone tires

Thanks Guys!

 

Good to know. I will have to try some all seasons that are not run flats.

 

I've lost track of the number of times I've said on this forum that losing the run-flats should be practically everyone's first mod.

 

Maybe it's because I live in the deep south but I had no problem when I went to normal tires from run flats. The only thing I signed was the bill.

 

I agree, but mostly based on my experience with BMWs. This whole saga of getting someone to mount them seems pretty bizarre. When I bought my '06 MCS (used, from a reputable VW dealer) it had the original Dunlop RFTs. For some reason they wouldn't give me the car with those tires on it though - probably not enough tread to ease their liability worries. So what did they do? They put a new set of non-RFTs on it for me (without consulting me)! I was happy enough, but I'm not sure everyone would have been. As far as willingness to do it, it seems to be a matter of who you run into on a given day.

 

Keep on calling till you find a cooperative tire shop. You could also buy another set of wheels and have the non-run flats installed on them and no one would be the wiser.

 

I use tire rack and their recommended installers. Discount Tire (I think they are America's Tire in Chico) DID get squirrelly on trying to match prices and question my decisions but they have never gotten too pushy except for not following instructions to put the more worn tires on the rear (pretty safe during California's dry season). I prefer the more exclusive shops for installation but it is hard to resist the free tire rotation from DT. RF tires are much less comfortable, less fuel efficient, handle more poorly and limit your choices. I carry a pump and a plug kit and have only had slow leaks around screws and nails in 130000 mini miles. Pump it up when I noticed it low and drive it to a shop.
Btw I haven't bothered to put a spare on any of my other cars either. Pump it up,leaving the spare in the boot, and drive to the shop.

 

+1 Discount tire swapped mine, they have a free lifetime rotation and balance.

 

I don't know....I kind of like the idea of having run flats on mine. I drive a lot and sometimes take some very long road trips (sometimes I'll wake up on a saturday and decide to go on a 500+ mile day trip just for kicks - Miami to Orlando and back for example), not to mention I also do a lot of late night driving, as in 3 and 4 in the morning, sometimes in questionable neighborhoods, and the run flats give me a little extra peace of mind knowing that even if I have a complete flat, I can at least drive far enough to get to a safe place where I can then plug or slime it and I won't have to stop in the middle of da 'hood or on the side of a busy highway.

To me it's just an added safety measure and a better option than a spare.

The biggest pain about run flats is finding someone who will work on them. I recently had a slow leak in one of mine and all of the major shops I called like goodyear, firestone, costco, etc... refused to even try to find the leak. They said all they would do was sell me a new tire and that was that. One of them even told me a blatant lie about run flats being made of a magical material that patches will not stick to.

Anyway, I finally found a smaller local tire shop that does a lot of custom wheel and tire work along with stuff like lift kits in addition to general mechanical stuff and they didn't even blink. I told them I had a runflat with a slow leak, they took the car in, 15 minutes later they drove it back out, told me they found a piece of metal in the tread and had patched it up good as new and that was that.

 

The PAX tires on my wife's Honda Odyssey run over $300 each. How much do the OEM runflats on the MINIs cost?

 

I think on Tire Rack they're roughly $150 or so. I'm too lazy too look it up right now but that's the price range I seem to remember.

 

Tires from dealer are $280 to $350 per tire.

Talking to the dealer today, I can get four rims, four TPS, and four runflats for a bundle price of $1600.00

Broken down it is 1,200 for fires, 600 for TPM's and 1,200 for rims, or so they said. so non bundle price $3,000.

 

That's a good deal, if you want the runflats...just $400 extra for a set of rims with TPMs

 

same here .. I have never had an issue with Discount Tires. I despise the run flats. Yes they are more responsive, however I like to keep some of my bones and teeth intact.

I just traded my 2007 R56 for the new JWC Coupe, first thing I did yesterday was to take it to Discount Tires and had them pull them off and put on some nice and sticky Yoko's. Improved the ride drastically and now allows the suspension to work.

Next stop remove that stupid tubo muffler. lol

 

Which muffler is that? I've heard just about everything under the car referred to as either a muffler or a resonator, I'm not sure which is which.

On most cars, the last silencer is called the resonator.

Dave

 

ok ... the resonator is in the back of the air box on the left and is attached on the firewall.

The turbo muffler is located on the down hose connected to the turbo. If you remove the coolant bottle you will see it. here is an ad that describes it better.

http://www.altaperformance.com/coupe...ide-boost-tube

 

Oh! I thought you were talking about exhaust system!

I've only heard that the thing attached to the fire wall, from the cold side piping of the inter cooler is called the noisemaker or sound generator I've never heard it called a resonator.

I'm undecided about removing the hot side muffler on the intake, the guys at Helix say it doesn't make any difference in power between an open pipe and the OEM intake muffler.

Dave

 

I dont know who that guy is All I can tell you is what I experienced...when I removed it on my 2007 S it was like taking ankle weights off. I took it for a drive and my torque steer was gone .. it was like a different car. When I added the cold air intake that even added more.

Now one of the benefits I found was that I could actually hear my turbo whine ..

Give the guy at Alta Performance or M7 Tuning a call and ask them ...

Cheers !!!

 

Those things are called boost tube, the hot side. Most people now say they don't actually do much except give you some added sound, perhaps a little added responsiness but not much else.

 

sorry to disagree... I have felt it and I dyno'd it here in Phoenix. And the affects are real. look if you remove the bottlenecks in the turbo you are going to get better gains. Again I can only tell you what I have done and the affects I have personally felt.

If you want more noise and to really hear the blow off valve ... I would tell you to remove the resonator and just plug up that hole. I have also done this on my 2007S but it just gave me better noise no performance improvement. The things I was going to get to were a cat back and chipping ... but I ended up trading it in for the JWC Coupe. And I will pull that muffler out again and get rid of the resonator.

Cheers !

 

Just had my local Mini dealer swap to non runflats on my wife's Mini with no issues. They said they recommend doing that. The difference is incredible, better than I imagined.

 

which tires did they give you?

 

I already knew what I wanted and I got the Conti Extreme Contact DWS. They even matched tire rack on price.

 

very nice did you stick with the 205 or go for the 215. I went with the 215 and they fill out the tire well very nicely. The ride is night and day, and they allow the suspension to work. Got my can of green slime and tire patch kit.