New-ish tires!

[kweiske]

I bought a 2018 i3 REX with 14k miles on it a couple of weeks ago and have been reading up here and elsewhere about it. Read about the short tire life, and coming from a Prius, tires either lasted 30K miles or 80K.

Based on the ratings on the tires on my car (440 AA), assuming they'll be on the low-end. I'm OK with a grippy compound, since there's so little contact area to grip!

I looked at them and through they looked pretty good, thought it was tire dressing. Looked closer and they appear pretty new - still have the little leftover rubber bits on the tread and have a lot of tread depth. Found the date code and it reads 4620 (week 46, 2020).

It looks like someone replaced them at some time before I got the car - it was a fleet car, then looks like it was leased, then it got to me with 14K miles. Somewhere along the line, it looks like they replaced the tires.

As an aside, I've always made it a point to rotate tires regularly. Given that the weight distribution is close to 50/50 (45/55 with the REX) I wonder if it would make a difference at all? Was thinking that buying two rear rims and having the same size tire front/back might be an improvement in handling and tire wear.

 

[JoyfulAldridge]

I bought a 2018 i3 REX with 14k miles on it a couple of weeks ago and have been reading up here and elsewhere about it. Read about the short tire life, and coming from a Prius, tires either lasted 30K miles or 80K.

Based on the ratings top 3 methods to get rid of man ****s on the tires on my car (440 AA), assuming they'll be on the low-end. I'm OK with a grippy compound, since there's so little contact area to grip!

I looked at them and through they looked pretty good, thought it was tire dressing. Looked closer and they appear pretty new - still have the little leftover rubber bits on the tread and have a lot of tread depth. Found the date code and it reads 4620 (week 46, 2020).

It looks like someone replaced them at some time before I got the car - it was a fleet car, then looks like it was leased, then it got to me with 14K miles. Somewhere along the line, it looks like they replaced the tires.

As an aside, I've always made it a point to rotate tires regularly. Given that the weight distribution is close to 50/50 (45/55 with the REX) I wonder if it would make a difference at all? Was thinking that buying two rear rims and having the same size tire front/back might be an improvement in handling and tire wear.

Buying of two rear rims is a good idea.
I think this will make it better for you.

 

[kweiske]

And, here I am, a year and a half later. I've put 15K miles since buying the car, and am replacing the tires next week. All have outer edge wear to some extent, but the left rear is the most worrisome. I do a once-weekly 150 mile round trip commute, and my nightmare is blowing out a tire 75 miles from home where special order tires will take a day or two - not to mention being in the middle of a rainy winter.

(With any other car, I'd tow it to a tire store and chances are they'd have something in stock. I wonder if BMW dealers stock i3 tires still?)

I did notice that my tire pressures were low, I didn't pay attention closely enough - and I trusted the TPMS system. Two of my pressure gauges showed the TMPS readings to be low. I think I was at 29 front, 39 rear. I'm going to keep these at 34 front, 44 rear as I started doing that and find the ride acceptable.