Rev up your engines,
today I'm going to talk about run flat tires,
should you get them or not, now the original
run flat tires were made by Michellin in 1934,
they made it for military use and believe
it or not armored cars so people couldn't
shoot out the tires and rob them, these tires
had a special rim inside and it was all foam,
so if the tire went out, the vehicle would
then ride on the foam, like I said it was
for military vehicles and armored cars,
it costs so much they never really put it
on regular cars, then in 1958 good year made
what they called captive air tires, it was
the first one that was sold for the whole
market,
I remember when I was a kid in the 50's the
had this ad with this woman who got a flat
tire and they were showing how horrible it
was that this woman couldn't possibly know
how to change a tire, that she was walking
through a dangerous neighborhood and they
weren't all that popular but it was the first
real mass produced one,
now recently both bridgestone and pirelli
were supplying run flat tires to BMW and mini
because they didn't want to have a spare tire,
they wanted less weight, they wanted more
space,
so instead of having 4 regular tires and a
spare, you got 4 of these run flat tires,
now in my mind using them instead of spare
tires is a dumb thing, take this 2002 Lexus,
it's got a full sized spare,
here it is, a full sized spare tire, this
one even has a fancy alloy rim,
now in my mind on modern cars, it's bad enough
that these newer cars only have this little
spare tires that are the mini spare tires
because if you've ever driven one with one
of those mini spare tires on, they don't handle
well, if you're in the ice or snow forget
it you're going to kill yourself, but the
point of having no spare tire at all is even
dumber, I mean yeah you can drive these run
flats theoretically up to 50 miles you might
be able to push it 100 at 50 mph or less,
but even then they don't handle all that well
and if you get a big hit on the side of them,
the tire is ruined so you're going to have
to buy new expensive tire, and that's not
going to be cheap,
for example, on a 2010 BMW 3 series, if you
buy a normal good year tire for it, you can
get them as low as $111 dollar a piece for
a normal tire, but for that same car if you
get a good year run flat, it's $327, and of
course if you go to the BMW dealer it's a
lot more than that for their run flat tires,
now my next door neighbor on the other side
of the fence, she's got a mini that came with
run flat tires, and she was always getting
flats in them, they cost her a fortune to
repair when she could get it repaired, so
she just gave up and got a normal set of tires
and a cute little air compressor to fill them
up if they go bad on the road, since she no
longer has a spare tire to put on, and that
can work ok because most tires get nails or
something and they loose air gradually so
you can just pump them back up again, maybe
put a little fix a flat in it and then pump
them up so a good air pump can help, but really
nothing beats having a good spare tire in
your trunk when an emergency happens,
and here's some information on run flat tires
that you may not know, to begin with, they
weigh 20-40% more and when you have more weight
that's spinning on your car your going to
get worse gas mileage and since they have
thicker side walls so they can ride on that
when the air runs out, they ride poorly, believe
it or not your tires, especially through the
side walls absorb more shock than your shock
absorbing system does, so if you have really
stiff tires, it's going to make for a poorer
ride, which is also one of the reasons that
most people and manufacturers don't use run
flat tires,
so buy a fancy BMW for it's great ride, and
then it ride rough, your not going to like
it, really they don't use them much at all
anymore,
because people spend that kind of money they
want a nice ride they don't want something
that rides, rough and that's why we have air
filled tires in the first place, originally
they were solid rubber, well solid rubber
rides like a kid in one of those little red
wagons,
you go over every bump you feel it because
their solid rubber, so all the millions of
dollars spend on researching and developing
to make a car run good and then put on those
tires that run rougher, that's not going to
cut the mustard,
so it's another reason why these tires aren't
all that popular,
for example honda used these run flats on
some of their vans and acuras but they stopped
doing it in 2009, there's no sense in designing
a thing that rides right and then put on a
tire that doesn't ride all that well and from
my experience from run flat tires, they are
often very hard to repair and the guys that
repair them I've seen guys charge $90 to repair
one tire, but a lot of times they aren't repairable
so you have to buy a new one, and they cost
so much money that economically it's not such
a smart choice either, so unless your fighting
a war in a military vehicle, or fighting a
war on the street,
driving a armored car, run flat tires, hey
not such a great idea if you ask me,
so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!
