Tire Mishap & Replacement Costs

[Finnus]

I had a "mishap" on my way back from Waterfest last weekend. I blew out my sidewall and gouged the rim on my right rear tire on a curb. Sh!? happens!!! I was pretty pissed. It was one of those stupid lapses of attention and I only had 500 miles on the car. :vsad2: :MTM: :vsad: I think tire manufacturers are behind those granite sharp-cornered curbs!

I changed the tire myself and used the compressor (I was about an hour from the dealer, Saturday night, and I didn't want to wait for roadside). It wasn't that bad, except that neither the manual, the compressor, nor the tire indicated the proper pressure! The tire said "Inflate to 350 kpa". Our European brothers might know what that is (kilograms per ???), but I don't. I'll post what the correct pressure is when I hear back from sercvice.

Roadside wouldn't meet me at the dealer and drive me home, so I had a $50 cab ride. :flamed: My service guys were great. I have both of their cell phone numbers now and I'm going to get reimbursed for the cab fare.

The compressor has a gauge measured in bar and PSI (not kpa), with a heavy red line at 2.5 bar. The tire didn't look fully inflated, so I pushed it another 1.0 bar (a 40% increase!). The tire sidewall still didn't flatted out. I was afraid that if I put more air in, the tire would explode. I "hobbled" to the dealer at 58 mph (tire says don't exceed 50 mph).

I gouged the rim about the size of a quarter. I couldn't drive the beast around looking like that, so I ordered another rim and two tires. The tires cost me $290 each and the rim $760 (less than I expected). Now I have a real spare (although it doesn't fit in the tire well).

All in all, a pretty frustrating experience expensive lapse of attention!

Finnus :cheers:

:addict: :addict: :addict:

[Snow]

That sucks to hear. That's not what you want when even the paint isn't dry yet.

For all you non physics-engineers I can inform you that kPa is short for kilo Pascal (thousand Pascals that is). But it doesn't seem fair that you have to have this knowledge when driving your car.

Finnus, you didn't think of buying a complete set of tires with different rims?

[RS6FEVR]

:cheers: Finnus

:bigeyes: :bigeyes: OUCH!

Just had to push that envelope eh? Reminds me of when I put a new set of Fikses on my Vette and took off (a little too fast, what a surprise) from a stop for a right hand turn on a curb divided highway, and, you guessed it, oversteer, slipping rear, into the curb, scrape up those beautiful rims and sidewall - bummer! :error: :error:

Your corrective experience was much better than mine LOL! Chevy or Fikse didn't really care anything about the circumstances! Glad you're getting it straightened out. We have a mag or aluminum wheel repair place here in Chicago that does great work on rims. Very reasonable to repair gouges, scrapes or abrasions.

Guess we better brush up on our metrics! I haven't thought about kilo pascals since college trig!


:addict: FEVR :addict:

[GoFastKindaGuy]

Just looked it up. 350 kPa = 3.5 bar = 50.8 psi :roll:

[Finnus]

Fred,

I guess I ended up at the right number by chance! Thanks for the info.

Finnus

[john hulbrock]

I read about your rim-tire mishap. I've had my M5 rims gouges fixed at my local body shop last week- these rims are very difficult to repair- bmw said to replace them(at 800 dollars each!) this fellow filed and tapered the gouged metal then refinished the area to match. I can't tell where the gouge was- If you want to investigate this e mail me and I will give you his name and # ( he is in northern bergen county nj )
JH