Urgh, what a rubbish day (tyre related)

Gaygle

Gaygle

Gaygle

Soldato
Joined
7 Nov 2004
Posts
15,741
Location
East of England
Today started great, and then turned sour about lunchtime.

Today I ordered to new front Potenza RE050A's for £260 in my lunch break, to go with my two rear Potenza RE050A's that i bought 2 months ago for £350. Great news!

I went outside to my car to just check i had given all the right details of my front tyres to the man down the phone - i had.

But i noticed that one of my rear tyres was looking a bit....saggy. The long and short of it is i drove very slowly to the nearest tyre place (3 miles) to check it out. Turns out it had 3 nails in it and it was irrepairable. Great. Need a new rear tyre now at around £180 (to go on top of my £260 fronts i'm having fitted Saturday).

Then i discover that they don't even make the Potenza RE050A in 255/35/18 size any more and it has been replaced by the Potenza S001. Great.

So now i'm left wondering what to do. I could get a full set of tyres at great expense, i could get the two RE050A's fitted at the front and have a different brand of tyres on the rear, or i could replace the fronts with the RE050A's and replace the single rear with a S001?

Or secret option number 4, i could sell the car and just by a Fiesta with £30 tyres :mad:

****ing cars. :mad:
 
Last edited:
Can you get in touch with the place you ordered the fronts from and see if they do one to replace the damaged rear?

Can you get them to change your order from two RE050A's to three/four S001?

I feel you pain after swapping the run flat's on the 5 series last year. £750 on bits of rubber was a nasty hit.
 
ajstan said:
What make of tyre is the spare?
Click to expand...

No idea. It's on a 16in rim i think so not happy using it unless i really have to.

Panzerbjorn said:
Can you get them to change your order from two RE050A's to three/four S001?
Click to expand...

In another twist to the story the Potenza S001's aren't avaliable in 225/40/18 (front tyre size), but the RE050A's are. However, in 255/35/18 (rear tyre size), the Potenza S001's are avaliable, and the RE050A's aren't. :rolleyes:

Panzerbjorn said:
I feel you pain after swapping the run flat's on the 5 series last year. £750 on bits of rubber was a nasty hit.
Click to expand...

:( i wouldn't have even been that annoyed if the rears were nearly spent, but they're on 7mm tread and have been used for 2 months!

rG-tom said:
are they RFTs RE050A? If so, get rid. Just cancel the order on the fronts?
Click to expand...

Nope, just the normal RE050A's.
 
I'd have a damn good hunt about on the net for an RE050A for the rear. They may not make them anymore, but surely someone somewhere will have some stock left over?
 
IvanDobskey said:
I'd have a damn good hunt about on the net for an RE050A for the rear. They may not make them anymore, but surely someone somewhere will have some stock left over?
Click to expand...

Spent the last 2 hours looking everywhere i can for a 255/35/18 RE050A with loading rating of 94 and can't find anything. Not even a part worn on ebay. Although my tyre guy has just told me that they haven't actually been discontinued, but are on back order and are likely to be 2-4 weeks at the minimum. With 3 nails in the tyre, this isn't really an option :(

[TW]Fox;18273556 said:
Just get some CS3 or something.
Click to expand...

Priced up some CS3's - £646 for a set. (£184 each for the rears, £136 each for the fronts).

And to think, i only started the day spending £250 :(
 
Janesy B said:
I'll let you have my Fiesta for that :p
Click to expand...

lol i hope you don't take it as an insult, but i think i'd rather have my tyres :p ;)

Anyway, i spotted some front CS3's on ebay for a very decent price, however they were MO's. Now i did some digging, and it appears MO's are quite a bit wider as standard. Someone had a photo of a side by side comparison of MO tyres with non MO tyres and measured them and found 255 MO tyres to be pretty much the same size as 265 non MO tyres.

EDIT: http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=441539

So i decided to just say **** it and ordered 4 new CS3s. Hopefully i can flog my nice pretty much new 255/35/18 Potenza RE050A on Ebay and get some money back!

Today has been expensive :(
 
Last edited:
MO's should be no wider, they are simply approved Mercedes fitment. I have MO's on my 530i, as to my knowledge a 265/35/18 doesnt come in non MO format?

A 255 wide tyre is... 255mm wide?
 
[TW]Fox;18274568 said:
MO's should be no wider, they are simply approved Mercedes fitment. I have MO's on my 530i, as to my knowledge a 265/35/18 doesnt come in non MO format?

A 255 wide tyre is... 255mm wide?
Click to expand...

I'm confused too, but the photos don't lie? :confused:
 
Maybe some perspective stuff going on in the photos, without a ruler beside each one its hard to judge the scale.

I'd have no issues fitting them. Wait, I *had* no issues fitting them :p
 
Last edited:
Looks to me like 1 tyre has/is a rim protector and the other doesn't which explains why 1 looks wider than the other.
 
[TW]Fox;18274568 said:
A 255 wide tyre is... 255mm wide?
Click to expand...

So you would think, but a friend just got a new car which has two different tyres on the back, both 185 width (both entirely the same size FWIW) and one has a visibly wider tread when looking at it from the back.

At a guess, i'd say it was 2 or 3cm difference. I was expecting to see '165' or '155' written on one of them after looking at the first that said 185.

edit - seems there are plenty of options for measuring width but they don't say which one is the 'proper' measurement that makes it into the tyre size. :/

http://www.etyres.co.uk/glossary-tyre-terms?term=width
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom