Driving home from work, hit a pothole that was nothing remarkable but the rim was bent and hitting the caliper. BMW towed it to dealer all of 2 miles away. Service tech said the wheel was toast, I am still having them give it to me and I will get it sent out and repaired as a spare 17" rim.
They said the tire was shot too but it never deflated. I am guessing it cut the cords and that was enough to write it off.

So 630 bucks later I will pick it back up. I have never bent a rim in 41 years of driving including 19" on my E93 when in Ohio and 17" on my M3 which I still have.

GET THE INSURANCE for your wheel tire. I did but I only got the type that covers up to 350 bucks so at least I am only out 280 bucks but still an ouch.

My wheel tire insurance is to renew next week for 35 bucks a year so I feel this is of good value.

Driving home from work, hit a pothole that was nothing remarkable but the rim was bent and hitting the caliper. BMW towed it to dealer all of 2 miles away. Service tech said the wheel was toast, I am still having them give it to me and I will get it sent out and repaired as a spare 17" rim.
They said the tire was shot too but it never deflated. I am guessing it cut the cords and that was enough to write it off.

So 630 bucks later I will pick it back up. I have never bent a rim in 41 years of driving including 19" on my E93 when in Ohio and 17" on my M3 which I still have.

GET THE INSURANCE for your wheel tire. I did but I only got the type that covers up to 350 bucks so at least I am only out 280 bucks but still an ouch.

My wheel tire insurance is to renew next week for 35 bucks a year so I feel this is of good value.

So in 41 years of never doing it you should look at it like this. You saved 35/year for 41 years...or $1,435 or if you bought the wheel and tire at $630 you saved $800 in 41 years. :)

Insurance is for those who can't afford to pay for the repairs on their own. Why would you give someone your money to hold onto in their account and collect interest on, only to pay you with your own interest money once you file a claim?

I am not sure which tire road hazard you got. I thought the Paragon Auto Club one is $350 for the tire and another additional $350 for the wheel up to $1,400 per year.

Anyway, I just picked up my full sized, matching wheel and tire for my Conti SSR's and style 188's - total cost including the pressure sensors was $524.

It does take a lot of room in my trunk, but of course I can remove it if I need the cargo space, but it will allow me to avoid using a run flat without air and thus ruining it so it would have to be replaced.

Because the tire is symmetrical and the rims match I can put it into rotation and thus prolong the life of my other tires and keep the tread wear approximately the same and in effect make the cost of the spare tire a non-issue.

BTW: Just curious: How deep and long was the pothole and how fast were you going?

Why do you think you didn't ruin the tires on both sides?

Insurance is for those who can't afford to pay for the repairs on their own. Why would you give someone your money to hold onto in their account and collect interest on, only to pay you with your own interest money once you file a claim?


I mean that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Insurance is for people who want to hedge against their risk of future expenses. Nobody buys a $50,000 sports car and lacks the money to repair a tire. The Future Value of $500.00 over a 3 year period at 7% interest is $612.50. Lets say your probablity of getting a flat tire is 30% per 15,000 miles. Lets also say the cost of repair of a new tire is $600.00 out of pocket without insurance. So in a 3 year period you have hedged in your favor according to odds and cash flow. Please retract your statement sir, its inaccurate and pompous.

I mean that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Insurance is for people who want to hedge against their risk of future expenses. Nobody buys a $50,000 sports car and lacks the money to repair a tire. The Future Value of $500.00 over a 3 year period at 7% interest is $612.50. Lets say your probablity of getting a flat tire is 30% per 15,000 miles. Lets also say the cost of repair of a new tire is $600.00 out of pocket without insurance. So in a 3 year period you have hedged in your favor according to odds and cash flow. Please retract your statement sir, its inaccurate and pompous.

I should clarify that when I say they pay you with your interest. They pay you with the interst gained from the free money you give them to hold. They then gain interest on all the money collected and only pay out for those that make claims. Overall, you basically give them your money and then they pay you with the interest from your money and the money from those hwo don't make claims.

Do you think they offer this out of the goodness of their heart or do you think they are in it for the money? I'm going to guess the latter.

I should clarify that when I say they pay you with your interest. They pay you with the interst gained from the free money you give them to hold. They then gain interest on all the money collected and only pay out for those that make claims. Overall, you basically give them your money and then they pay you with the interest from your money and the money from those hwo don't make claims.

Do you think they offer this out of the goodness of their heart or do you think they are in it for the money? I'm going to guess the latter.

This is how all insurance works. I haven't had an accident from the time I started owning cars but have been paying insurance, and yes my premium is paying for some dumb people who are can't pay attention to the road, but it also pays for some who are unlucky enough to get hit by an uninsured or underinsured idiot. One day I may be on the receiving end or maybe not, but does that mean I wasted my money all those years? Maybe, but such is the way insurance is. You pay for it and hope you never use it, but when you do use it you wonder why you ever though of not having it.

Insurance that makes the most sense to buy is insurance for unexpected, large potential loss that one could not afford.

If you can afford it, it usually makes more sense to self-insure it otherwise you are paying a sum certain to the insurer for something that may not happen and are just trading dollars with the insurer.

Anyway, back on topic for a minute:

Regarding why you only damaged one tire/rim, in addition to wanting to know the depth of the pothole and the speed, I would also like to know if you had a different tire pressure in the front versus the rear, and if so, which was damaged - the one with the higher or lower pressure?

I mean that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Insurance is for people who want to hedge against their risk of future expenses. Nobody buys a $50,000 sports car and lacks the money to repair a tire. The Future Value of $500.00 over a 3 year period at 7% interest is $612.50. Lets say your probablity of getting a flat tire is 30% per 15,000 miles. Lets also say the cost of repair of a new tire is $600.00 out of pocket without insurance. So in a 3 year period you have hedged in your favor according to odds and cash flow. Please retract your statement sir, its inaccurate and pompous.

The only thing that is pompous is your response. It is clear you do not understand how insurance works. Insurance spreads risk over a large number of insurds. At the simplest level, if each person had a 1% chance of a loss in a year that would cost $100 and 100 people participated in the insurance, then your premium would be $1. What blows this is that the insurance is administered by a for profit company. They collect a premium, pay employees, market their product and earn a profit so you end up paying $5 instead of $1. For a 1% risk of a $100 loss this makes no sense. Therefore, you should only buy insurance for a risk you can not afford to bear. If you cause an accident and destroy expensive cars and injure people it would be very expensive, therefore you insure yourself against this risk. As you said, you can afford to replace a wheel and tire, therefore you should not pay to insure yourself against this risk.

Spending $1 to possibly recover $600 (or more if more than 1 tire goes) may make some sense, but spending $700 to possibly recover the same $600 (or a little more) is crazy. Admittedly you may be able to recover multiple times if you don't learn to avoid potholes the first time.

I bought the $28 Paragon plan as this is my first BMW, first RFT's and first tires under a 55 or 60 profile and I did not know what to expect. The consensus seemed to be to buy road hazard warranty particularly if one lives in a state that does not maintain their roads (like Massachusetts), but the $700 my dealer wanted was ridiculous. I was not sure what people meant by potholes. Massachusetts is literally wall to wall (gutter to gutter?) depressions where the top surface has worn down to the next layer. I try to avoid as many of these as possible but it is impossible to avoid them all. In my first three weeks I have learned that these do not pose a serious problem - or at least not yet.

I am still hoping the Opie will post how deep the pot hole was that he hit and at what speed.

BTW: Just curious: How deep and long was the pothole and how fast were you going?

Why do you think you didn't ruin the tires on both sides?

IF THE POTHOLE WAS BIG ENOUGH TO HIT WITH BOTH TIRES, THEN I WOULD NOT CONSIDER IT A POTHOLE. SINK HOLE MIGHT BE A BETTER DESCRIPTION.....

:confused

Doesn't e93 have 18" rims standard (unless they didn't have that in 07)?

IF THE POTHOLE WAS BIG ENOUGH TO HIT WITH BOTH TIRES, THEN I WOULD NOT CONSIDER IT A POTHOLE. SINK HOLE MIGHT BE A BETTER DESCRIPTION.....

:confused
I believe he meant same side but both front and rear getting caught, that can easily happen with some of the potholes around here. Oh and I've seen several sink holes around too :stickoutt.

Spending $1 to possibly recover $600 (or more if more than 1 tire goes) may make some sense, but spending $700 to possibly recover the same $600 (or a little more) is crazy. Admittedly you may be able to recover multiple times if you don't learn to avoid potholes the first time.
I'm not sure how you "learn" to avoid potholes. Not like people go searching for them, you usually hit them when you are not paying attention or when the roads are covered with rain water. Now don't tell me you can learn to detect a pothole under water, that is one lesson I'd like to see someone give. :eek:

To settle thw worthiness of insurance debate - do you ever wonder why they call insurance in blackjack a sucker bet? The same rule applies here.

what post?

Can we get off the insurance discussion already. The is getting borderline on off topic and we derailed the OPs post enough already. If you want to discuss insurance benefits/disadvantages, please start a thread in the off-topic section. Any more on this and the posts will be towed. Keep it on topic.

I'd have the car aligned if it hit a pothole hard enough to damage a wheel. Most of the cars I've worked on with damaged wheels have had other suspension damage.

Being in the insurance business I'm going to give everyone a good rule of thumb: Only buy insurance on something you can't afford to replace.

The only thing that is pompous is your response. It is clear you do not understand how insurance works. Insurance spreads risk over a large number of insurds. At the simplest level, if each person had a 1% chance of a loss in a year that would cost $100 and 100 people participated in the insurance, then your premium would be $1. What blows this is that the insurance is administered by a for profit company. They collect a premium, pay employees, market their product and earn a profit so you end up paying $5 instead of $1. For a 1% risk of a $100 loss this makes no sense. Therefore, you should only buy insurance for a risk you can not afford to bear. If you cause an accident and destroy expensive cars and injure people it would be very expensive, therefore you insure yourself against this risk. As you said, you can afford to replace a wheel and tire, therefore you should not pay to insure yourself against this risk.

+1 I have a BA in Economics if that means anything. :D

Where you at Jhunter? Defend yourself...