Looks like the end of the road for my front left tire. I think the wheel may have made it out okay. There’s no visible damage to it. It happened not even on a pothole, just a normal road seam! Felt it all the way in my soul. Happened coming back from Hooptiecon/Radwood, of which pictures below.
Now here’s the conundrum I’m faced with:
The car has been riding on the Bridgestone DriveGuard run-flats that came with it, and they’ve been good to me. I’m more than satisfied with dry grip for driving around and they’re okay in the wet. To be honest, I had assumed they were summer tires until I went autocrossing a couple of weeks ago and 1) noticed the M+S designation and 2) was very disappointed in their autocross performance.
Since then, I had decided to switch to summer tires and probably non-runflats when the time came. No sense in getting rid of perfectly good tires prematurely. However, this unfortunate event puts me in a difficult position. I don’t even know what my options are.
Should I try replacing just the single tire? It’s one of the front ones, which means it’s 225/40RF18. TireRack has them at an eye-watering $225 a pop.
Could I swap out just both fronts? In that case, I would probably not go for the DriveGuards. However, is it okay to have summers in front and all-seasons in the back? Non-RFs in front and RFs in the back? What do I even need to buy to run non-RFs in a car without a jack?
The two summer options I’m looking at are Michelin Pilot Sport 4S and Continental ExtremeContact Sport. The Michelins seem to be slightly better but way more expensive. I think I’d be very happy with the Contis. I run ExtremeContact DWS 06s on my A4 and they’re great.
So here are the current options:
- 1 front Bridgestone DriveGuard: $225.99
- 2 front Bridgestone DriveGuard: $451.98
- 2 front Continental ExtremeContact Sport: $329.98
- 4 staggered Continental ExtremeContact Sport: $707.96
- Some other brand for fronts or all?
What say you, oppo?
Radwood pics for your time. I didn’t really spend much time there because I had thought is was the last weekend of March so I didn’t plan on attending. I did not meet up with anybody.
