Was driving the GL home from work today and hit a good size pothole - almost immediately lost air pressure in the rt ft tire. Now this was on a 2-lane road in the middle of the country where the only place to pull over would have been in some sloppy mud on the side of the road (it's been raining). Needless to say that changing a tire in this situation would have been dangerous & a royal PITA. But with the Runflats, I didn't even bother stopping to check things out until I was able to creep the GL home at 50mph.

Turns out the wheel is bent on the inner rim, and though I can't actually see any damage to the tire, I imagine there must be something for it to lose all air pressure. Bend on the inner rim does not appear to be large enough to have broken the bead.

Thank god we purchased the MB wheel & tire warranty with the GL (something like $500-$600), as a new wheel is over $700 MSRP and a new 20" runflat is in the neighborhood of $350 at tirerack.

Now just gotta leave the GL parked until I can call the local dealer Monday...

 

I wonder how long it is gonna take to get the tire to the dealer. I have heard horror stories. I thought that was supposed to be your mom's car... I hope she yelled at you.

 

It is her car...we just traded vehicles for a week so she can get my w210's transmission serviced because there are no decent MB repair shops iny my area (near Modesto).

There was no yelling, and she was actually very pleased at how the runflats allowed me to continue home instead of sitting roadside to wait for AAA.

 

If you drove on your runflats with no air, they need to be replaced. You usually will not see any damage but they are damaged.

 

Turns out the tire wasn't damaged at all from the impact...just the wheel was bent enough to break the bead seal and let all the air out. I have actually hit this same pothole many times in both my trucks (old Cummins Dodge with forged 16" Alcoas, and new '08 half ton Ram with 20" forged Welds) as it is unavoidable when there is a car in the oncoming lane. Looks like the soft cast alloys combined with the low-profile, stiff sidewalls of runflats makes for wheels that are very easily susceptible to damage.

On another note, the dealer wanted to just replace the wheel and reuse the tire, which I was not okay with since the tire had seen 15-20 miles of driving while "flat". My service advisor is now trying to get the tire replaced as well, but appears to be bound to whatever MBUSA authorizes him to do under their wheel/tire warranty.

Either way, I won't go down quietly until they put a new tire on the GL...

 

Got it all fixed under warranty. MB originally would not authorize a new tire because the tire was technically undamaged from the pothole, and any damage was from me driving on the "flat" runflat for 20 miles. So I then called MB Financial and was able to help them see things my way, and they subsequently approved the warranty repair.

Total repair cost was $1,413 and my share of that was $3 (tow cost $103 and MB would only cover $100).

On another note, it appears the new wheel they installed is a slightly different color...more of a gunmetal than silver. It actually looks better than the old wheels, but now I have one wheel that is ever-so-slightly darker than the others. I was assured by the finance manager that it would be taken care of, but for now I'm just glad to have the GL back.