[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by TurboWeasel

That's a very good point actually. I got a flat on a dual carriageway after a lorry deposited chunks of concrete onto the road, which buckled my wheel and popped the tyre off the rim. The AA wouldn't come out as they classified it as a 'road traffic accident' and told me to call the police

Probably my fault for being too detailed. I should have just said I had a puncture, but your point about not relying on that method remains. The AA won't necessarily come out by default, even in easy to get to areas. They are just as bad as insurance companies for worming their way out of providing the service you paid them for

Apparently the AA also won't recover you if your MOT has run out, as I discovered a month or so back on the Impreza when it blew a radiator hose off in traffic, on the way to a re-arranged MOT after the garage cancelled. I get the reason for them doing it as they were getting people calling up with cars they've just bought and dragged from a field who were trying to get a tow hundreds of miles home, but as a customer of theirs for 10+ years it's pretty obvious that wasn't my situation. Oh well, something to chalk up to experience. Similarly with yours, definitely the less said the better in most of these things!

Light cars can get away with bigger sidewalls without feeling too squirmy because there's less weight to move it about but heavier modern cars need shorter sidewalls to help keep handling relatively sharp. More mass to support and less sidewall to do it with is always going to end badly. I sliced a front tyre on the BMW this time last year and was lucky to get recovered quickly as I was only fifteen minutes away from my uncles garage. He recognised the plate and put his dinner down when the BMW call came through. That was of course after I'd walked a mile down the road to get reception, having to leave the pup in the car while I did which has pretty much traumatised her against the BMW ever since. Then earlier this year I was driving back down the A9 and hit another crater, luckily this time with RFT winters on, because I couldn't see it thanks to the lights of a truck coming towards me. The tyre had a massive egg on it but at least it held air and I got home. This was at 11pm in a red weather warning for snow with an hour either side of me to the nearest city. That's not somewhere you want to be stuck waiting in the hope the AA can come and rescue you. I really don't want to be stuck running RFT's but until car manufacturers return to actually fitting spare wheels (and giving space to fit the one you've taken off!!), for some of us there's sadly little choice.

I'm not sure whether it's the fact roads are getting so much worse, I'm now driving on worse roads more, or cars are just getting heavier and with tyres more susceptible to punctures, or a combo of both, but the number of tyres I've damaged in the last 150k miles eclipses the first 600k. And being a geek I did look up how many miles I've done in the last 21 years... The BMW is up to one punctured go flats, one that was damaged, and three RFT's with eggs after big impacts. BMW definitely didn't design the F31 with rural roads in mind when they spec'd the performance kit on it and saw fit to use 19" wheels and rubber band tyres!

[TurboWeasel]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

Apparently the AA also won't recover you if your MOT has run out, as I discovered a month or so back on the Impreza when it blew a radiator hose off in traffic, on the way to a re-arranged MOT after the garage cancelled. I get the reason for them doing it as they were getting people calling up with cars they've just bought and dragged from a field who were trying to get a tow hundreds of miles home, but as a customer of theirs for 10+ years it's pretty obvious that wasn't my situation. Oh well, something to chalk up to experience. Similarly with yours, definitely the less said the better in most of these things!

Light cars can get away with bigger sidewalls without feeling too squirmy because there's less weight to move it about but heavier modern cars need shorter sidewalls to help keep handling relatively sharp. More mass to support and less sidewall to do it with is always going to end badly. I sliced a front tyre on the BMW this time last year and was lucky to get recovered quickly as I was only fifteen minutes away from my uncles garage. He recognised the plate and put his dinner down when the BMW call came through. That was of course after I'd walked a mile down the road to get reception, having to leave the pup in the car while I did which has pretty much traumatised her against the BMW ever since. Then earlier this year I was driving back down the A9 and hit another crater, luckily this time with RFT winters on, because I couldn't see it thanks to the lights of a truck coming towards me. The tyre had a massive egg on it but at least it held air and I got home. This was at 11pm in a red weather warning for snow with an hour either side of me to the nearest city. That's not somewhere you want to be stuck waiting in the hope the AA can come and rescue you. I really don't want to be stuck running RFT's but until car manufacturers return to actually fitting spare wheels (and giving space to fit the one you've taken off!!), for some of us there's sadly little choice.

I'm not sure whether it's the fact roads are getting so much worse, I'm now driving on worse roads more, or cars are just getting heavier and with tyres more susceptible to punctures, or a combo of both, but the number of tyres I've damaged in the last 150k miles eclipses the first 600k. And being a geek I did look up how many miles I've done in the last 21 years... The BMW is up to one punctured go flats, one that was damaged, and three RFT's with eggs after big impacts. BMW definitely didn't design the F31 with rural roads in mind when they spec'd the performance kit on it and saw fit to use 19" wheels and rubber band tyres!

Thanks for that. Another gotcha to be wary of.
I'm with BMW's roadside assistance now, so hopefully that will be a better experience than the AA, should I need it.

That's the thing, even if you had a space saver, where would you put a punctured 20+" SUV wheel that's covered in snow and mud? I'm hoping one day people will tire of bloated tarmac wreckers and there'll be a resurgence in small wheels again.