1 On Saturday, July 12, 2003, just 3 weeks after installing my new set of Bridgestone SO3 Pole Positions, I had my first away-from-home flat tire on the way to a BMW meet in Milford, CT. I had had flats previous to this, but in all cases they had been slow leaks that enabled me to get home and discover the problem in the privacy of my own driveway. This was my first opportunity to see what the BMW toolkit, jack, and limited service donut was all about. Luckily, I did several things right:
- Although, I did not have my owner's manual with me due to in-progress glovebox repairs, I had a copy of Mike's Tire Change Instructions stowed in my toolkit. Run, don't walk, to this page, printout out the instructions and keep them with you!
- I had managed to limp into the parking lot of the BMW meet where I had lots of friendly support and advice on what to do next.
- The parking lot where I was changing the tire was that of an Italian diner which was open and served beer. This proved vital in my attitude adjustment as I patiently waited for AAA to arrive.
- The BMW jack is kind of a scary cantilever design if you have never used it before. At first glance, it is hard to believe that this thing will work until you cautiously start trying to use it. Faced with this contraption of obtuse German mechanical engineering, I would have preferred to test it out beforehand in the safety of my own driveway, and with my jack stands in place.
- I am used to using a floor jack to lift the car along its midline and using several supporting jack stands and wheel chocks as safety measures. As I was lifting the corner by the damaged tire, I realized to my dismay that the BMW kit only provides a single wheel chock. Add any slight incline to the fact that you are jacking up a corner of the car and you immediately start looking franticly for any piece of roadside debris to substitute as extra wheel chocks. Lucky for me, Mark, an M3 owner from CT, was kind enough to loan me his wheel chock so that I could double-chock the opposing corner.
- A couple of months prior, I had bought a set of SSR Integral lightweight 17" rims. That day, I found out the hard way that the BMW lug nut wrench was too thick in diameter to fit the recesses of my new rims. Up until this point, I had always changed my tires using a standard 17mm socket mounted on a breaker bar or a torque wrench. It never dawned on me that the wrench in my toolkit would not work with my new rims!
2 The BMW lug nut wrench won't fit in the narrow, deeply recessed lugnut holes of my SSR rims!
3 While a standard 17mm 6 point socket fits fine!
In the end, AAA came to my rescue and changed out the tire for me with the donut spare. While I missed the ride, the after-party was at someone's house that was along my path home. So, I stopped in briefly to say hello and gave my thanks to everyone that had helped me out. The next week, I went to Sears and bought a breaker bar and a deep 17mm socket that I now keep tucked along the side of the BMW toolkit in my trunk.
