Allen

Obviously you can't rotate them, but do you guys ever find the need to get them balanced? On my 911, I have staggered wheels, but the tires tires don't last long enough to ever get out of balance. I'm just curious if I can expect to have to get my tires balanced on my '08 535i w/Sports Package anytime during their ~20-30K miles life.

GT Premi

It's very rare to have to get tires rebalanced during their life on your car. If you do, there's a good chance you actually have some wheel damage.

Palmo

I disagree - it depends on how fussy you want to be. Almost every car I have ever had has required the front wheels to be 're-balanced' after approx 50% of the tread has worn. This hasn't been essential, but has been necessary IMO to attempt to remove 'minor' vibrations that begin to appear as the tyres wear. I have never had reason to 're-balance' rear tyres unless these were been rotated onto the front.

With regards the e60 and staggered set-up, my first set of rears lasted approx 20k miles and did not cause any problems with balancing. However, my fronts have now covered just over 21.5k miles and I would say are in the region of 60%+ worn. They were beginning to cause 'minor' vibrations at various speeds until I recently had them re-balanced (actually the Front Rims were swapped out by my dealer with my tyres being refitted to the replacement Rims - long story - I have a thread about this). The minor vibrations have been improved but not 100% gone.

In my experience (gained on several different makes & models of cars) apart from when the wheels / tyres are new & balanced from the factory, the only way to subsequently get comparable balancing done is with the use of a 'Hunter GSP9700 Road Force Balancing Machine' - Click Here. Places using this equipment in the UK are extremely hard to come by, but the difference is noticed immediately with NO vibrations felt in my experience. I believe this equipment may be more available in the US?

IceyTys

I have a follow up question to that as well, would it help extend the life of the tires if you swapped the tires maybe once a year? I.E you take the rear tires and have them dismounted and place on the opposite side of the car still going the same direction. If I am not mistaken you can mount direction tires on either wheel as long as the tire is still going in the right direction.

Has anyone done this, any thoughts? It seems if you could extend the lift of your tire to say 25-30K it would be worth the $80 to make the swap

Palmo

I don't see why this can't be done with 'directional' tyres, although I'm not sure if this would help tyre wear or not. There is a school of thought suggesting that it is better to leave tyres on a car the way they are origianlly mounted for the whole life of the tyre as this will help to not introduce problems e.g. increased vibrations as a tyre has 'worn' into the way the car is set up on that axle / hub - not sure if there is any truth in this or not?

Note however, the Continental Sport 2 tyres, as fitted to the 172m's (optional 'M Sport' staggered set-up) could not be moved to the opposite rim as these are not 'directional' in the true sense of the word, they have to be mounted on the rim with the word 'outside'. showing. What you could do is simply switch the rear wheels around, but this would mean the tyres were effectively travelling backwards / in the opposite direction to that which they had been previously rotating, again this could be the source of vibrations IMHO. Depends how fussy an individual is to that sort of thing I guess?

Presley348

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Hello 'Allen':

WOW did you open up a keg of worms a lot of us e60 owners wonder on BMW e60 wheel balancing!! (LOL). I wonder at the same question about rotating my "Asymmetrical" Bridgestone's tires "side" to "side" on my e60 530i on my 166 BMW OEM M5 staggered rims.

I was advised by the Kauffman tire manager Mr. Mike Rainwater here in PTC GA, that yes I can rotate my new Asymmetrical Bridgestone but only from "side" to "side", and there should be no problem.

Then when I checked with my BMW dealer service manager Mr. Simmons, and he advised me, yes that is TRUE you can rotate Asymmetrical tires "side" to "side", but by doing that, you could get a roaring road noise! He said now you can try it, but BMW does not recommend rotation of e60's with staggered tires!

Well I am no BMW tire e60 expert, and I hate staying on the "bleeding edge" with Chris Bangle and his BMW team, and their outstanding body design on the e60, and its iDrive technology work that started in production for us around 2004. I am tired of listening to some of these HUNGRY 3rd party BMW vendors and I found they did not know about the new e60s yet, and I was being used as their BMW e60 guinea pig at my expense, time and headaches....and more of my $$$$! (LOL)

I Thank God for the BMW e60 forum because you its members that have answered many of my questions over the past few years, and kept me from buying and trying things that you have already tried and did not work on our e60s. So I am sticking with you the members here at the BMW e60 forum, and also the BMW North America administration and try to stay with all BMW OEM parts, and I am not right now rotating my staggered set of Bridgestone tires, that I have been running them for about two years now, and they have not been rotated, and their doing wonderful! Now I do keep the correct tire pressure in them, (and I checked weekly), and I also keep the all four wheels balanced, and all four wheels aligned at the local Atlanta BMW dealer, and I have gotten about 14,000 miles on them now and showing 6 3/2s worth of even tread left. (which is not that bad for a high performance tire in a staggered set on a e60)

In conclusion, I don't really know about the routine Asymmetrical staggered tire rotation yet because I have never done it yet, in fear of abnormal road noise, but I do know by keeping my tires balanced, and re-balanced, aligned only once by BMW service, and I always try to keep the correct tire pressure, and I once had all four wheels aligned done by BMW service at my local dealer, seems to be working, but does cost me $239.77 a pop too for that service! But costing me $239.77 once in two years is not that much of preventative maintenance, when we are talking $350.00 to $400.00 per tire too if I had to premature replace one or two of them because of un-even tread wear!!

Sincerely,


R. Eddie Presley

PS,
Please excuse the misspelled words, and misused grammar and the syntax in this email, I have not got time to spell and grammar check it right now, but the facts I experience are there about my BMW e60 wheel balancing and rotation with Staggered set, and I hope it can help you and save some time and some $$$$. By the way unless things have changed in two years time, I heard that most people are lucky to get 10 to 12,000 miles on a staggered set of tires on e60s with the sports package, I read what you wrote, and hope we both can get at least 20 to 30,000 miles out of them!! Have a good day!!