No spare wheel

Yup. 23 years old, But with 140,000 Km, or about 85,000 miles.

 

Mine's a Golf R, but the spare is on an 18" wheel so it should clear the front brake rotor.

 

I had a 7.5R and now have an 8R. Yes the 18"with a 70 profile tyre is good front and rear on the 7.5 as I found out when I severely buckled the front Pretoria alloy in a pothole on a motorway and no amount of foam would have got me on my way.
On the 8R due to the size of the front disk it can only go on the rear but I find it comforting there is a solution should the same happen again.

 

Cost-cutting indeed. First they remove the spare and now they remove the gearstick!

 

Yes, I bought this one 6 years ago, proper calibrated and very robust.

 

I had a puncture about 4 weeks ago, a screw like so many above. Fortunately I must have got it very close to home after a 100 mile journey but it was flat as a pancake the next day when I went to use again. Fortunately I could pump the tyre up enough to get to the local Kwikfit as I have no spare at all and no runflats either (Tesla).

I change my M235i tyres at least twice a year to Winters wheels/tyres and back again and that car does not have run flats or a spare either but it does have a pump and a bottle of goo.

Punctures are pretty rare really, trouble is they can really leave you in the lurch when they do happen. I had a BMW 320d company car with early run flats a few years ago and the tyre destroyed itself four up with all our holiday kit on our way home, middle of nowhere and the sidewall disintegrated totally, could not drive any further. Cue long wait for recovery to nearest tyre place, 30 mins from closing, technician could not get the remnant of the tyres bead off the wheel. They had no angle grinder and in the end he managed to use side cutters and gnaw away one wire at a time and eventually got the bead off an hour after closing time so the new tyre could be fitted. He got a big tip!

 

The ultimate driving machine. Apparently.

 

Do these electronic oil sensors detect severe overfill?

 

I'd love an 8R but over here they're unobtainium and selling for over MSRP when you can get one. I'd get a good trade-in on a 2019 R with 22K miles, but my car is paid for and I'm enjoying not having a car payment.

 

Not sure. Overfill, probably yes. Severe enough to cause windage and or even damage, maybe not. Maybe another sensor would pick it up, maybe the overpressure would blow it out of the breather and into the intake. If you were really lucky you might get sumping and diesel runaway. This happened to a mate, he managed to stop it.

 

The E90 320d is a workhorse family car and a pretty decent one; it remains the only car I ever replaced with an identical one (well slightly higher spec). The only issue were the run flat tyres, being a lease car they would not permit a change to non runflats and a spare despite me lobbying them to say a run flat that destroys itself is more useless that a regular tyre with a spare.

It was fun to drive, my first BMW and led to me getting a E92 335i for my wife as well.

 

I'm sure it was a decent enough car, the 3 series has always been one of the best in its class. But a workhorse family car that risks dumping you at the side of the road on the way to the airport for a simple puncture, sorry but that's a fail. My dad's 520 did exactly this, he was fortunate that they were near home and could go to a tyre supplier they knew locally for a replacement. Otherwise it would have been missed flight, buggered holiday.

 

Not sure I blame the car for the puncture. My critique was aimed at the tyres and the assumption that run flats would let you drive home or to a garage. I only had that one instance in 8 years of 320d ownership but it was an extreme example.

 

I blame the car for fitting runflats, absolutely! A puncture is a reaso nably foreseeable event, to have a car design that can't cope with one is just bad design.

A spare and a jack lets you fix the problem in 20 minutes and be on your way.

 

Might have been worth investing in a separate set of wheels, onto which you could put the tires of your choice. The leasing company would have no say over that, would they? You could turn in the car at the end of the lease with no miles on the original rubber.

 

Haha, yes I had the same concerns with my roadster, beautiful engine though so it was forgivable. The ride was terrible on run-flats. Never really did particularly long journeys in it and never had a problem.

 

Just for info, I managed to tear the sidewall of one of the tyres my Korean hearse the other day on the gates into the vets car park, sorting it out was an incredibly miserable experience, even with an inflated space saver (wet ground, in the dark, boot full of stuff, cat in a basket yowling in the back seat.....oh and it was my birthday....).

Anyway as a result I have bought a space saver for my hairdressers car which arrives today, as some of the back roads I find myself on may not even have a number, and the horror of awaiting the RAC to rock up gives me the fear.

So buy a space saver, it will still be a miserable experience, but at least you can help yourself

S

 

And install What Three Words on your phone. I believe a lot of the emergency services, and services like AA, RAC, Green Flag, can use that as a location aid in remote places.

 

Didn’t see that coming.

 

Yup got that! Reception can be an issue though !