Silly tire questions

[unixphone]

My rear tire is wearing out and the front still looks good.
Can i keep the front rft and change the back to regular tire?
Since they are all rft now, there is no rush to change the rear tires right? Do i get a servicing light before the tire break?

[paris1]

First off, the rear tires on a Z4 will wear at approx. twice the rate as the fronts. I bought a used Z4 a year or so ago and thought I might end up in the same spot you are, given the way the RFs looked when I bought the car. My plan was to buy a set of used rear run-flats off the internet to even out the overall wear and get me to the point where I needed to replace all four (with non-RFTs). That's something you might want to consider as you can find used RFTs for pretty reasonable prices. That said, I ended up replacing all four tires a couple of months ago with non-RFT Bridgestone SP-04 Pole position tires and I could not be happier. The road noise, ride and handling are light years ahead of the old Bridgestone RFTs and I saved a ton of $$. Think about it.

[unixphone]

Where did you get your tires? I am thinking Costco or BMW dealer.

The car is 32k millage and the front tires still look really good. I am heading toward change the rear to RFT first. Then, change all four to regular when the car hit 64k. Of course, I just assume 2 RFT is cheaper than 4 regular tires.

[paris1]

I don't know if you've owned the car from new, but from the mileage you cite, I suspect it's on it's second set of run-flats. I think your mileage forecast of 64k is optimistic. I paid $816 for a set of SP-04s out the door at Costco. As I recall, a set of
original equipment run-flat Bridgestones would have been around $1300 from Costco. What I plan on doing is replacing the rears with two new SP-04s from Costco purchase when they wear out and the fronts still have decent tread. BTW, I picked up a large screw near the sidewall of the right rear with 2400 miles on the new tires and Costco replaced it free of charge no questions asked. I highly recommend purchasing from them!

[Eltee]

I'm not aware of a service light reminder for changing tires.
Also check to make sure you do not have a staggered tire set up which obviously eliminates the ability to swap front to back.

[rking117]

you will not be happy with a RFT on the front and a non RFT on the back trust me. I had my back tires replaced recently with the same make and model by a popular tire company. Unfortunately they in their infinite wisdom decided to build a special tire for Mercedes with the same name model etc. the only difference was that the tire was non RFT. So when i got them put on i was so loose i was all over the road. Tramlining was a million times worse that it ever was before. Before we could figure it out i was able to swap them to the front which gave me an understeer but at least i could control that better. There is nothing worse than having your front tires stick to the pavement and having your rears float all over the place. So dont do it. My solution was to have the tire shop swap out the 4 tires (including the 2 which were at half life) to another brand.

Non RFTs versus RFTs are another subject all together which I wont debate. However, mixing the two, not only is not recommended, it is actually dangerous in my opinion.