• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

Tire Warranties

R

rssllkaplan

Guest
TIRES, TIRES. This may seem an odd thread, but it seems I hear and experience more and more MC shops and dealers that don't honor any warranty for tires and tubes.

Most recent experience: new tire and tube. Dealer in CT did the whole job. From removal from bike to remount. 700 miles and one month later, flat tire on the road. Trailered it back. NO nail, No valve leak. Just a tube failure. Call the dealer and he says there are so many things that can affect tire performance that they don't do anything about such a occurrence. Their answer: pay for a new tube and tire remount.

It's bad enough that the cost of everything asociated with bikes has gone through the roof. I know - I'm just venting now.

Any suggestions or observations?
 
The obvious question is; what "failed" on the tube?

The most common failure, barring a puncture from something through the tire and tube, is a pinch during mounting. That should be pretty easy to see.

Other possibilities are punctures on the inner diameter from the spoke ends if the inner band is not there or damaged. A failure around the valve stem could occur if you run the pressure too low. Again, these should be easy to determine.

Another possibility, but harder to determine after the fact, would be something left inside the tire at the time of mounting like a tiny sharp rock.



:dance:dance:dance
 
Thanks Lee

Lee,

Thanks for your help.

Any thoughts about the dealer's response?

Russ K.
 
This is sort of related. When I worked @ Goodyear plant we got what was called a discount. IMO it was about the same as what you could "shop for" and get anywhere. Many of us bought them on principle of our plant but there was a running joke that you better hope you didn't have a warranty claim as it was unheard of to actually collect $$$. My point is that even back in the days when tire warranties were fairly common nobody! seemed to get happy with the result. The common thread was "that tires been run low, not our problem"! Of course a tire that "goes flat" has been "run low" at least until you can stop.
Good luck ever collecting on a tire & especially a tube... :hungover-I'm not hungover but dammit! its rained here over a hundred times in the last two months!:hungover:hungover
 
I think you're likely to have better luck approaching the tire manufacturer directly rather then the dealer. In the end - it's the manufacturer who provides the warranty.

Case in point - when I got my R1200R it came equipped with Conti's. My rear tire consistently lost about 1 PSI per week, driving me nuts trying to find the leak. I finally found a tiny bubble would form on the tread of the tire - right in the middle of flawless looking rubber. No visible hole or other defect in the tire. I only found it by soaking the tire with a soap/water mix and being very patient.

I checked my owners manual, and it said the tire warranty was the responsibility of the tire manufacturer. OK.. so I searched around and found the US representative of Continental motorcycle tires's email address. I sent a polite email, which was promptly replied to with a phone number to contact him at. I called, we discussed the problem, and Conti came through like gangbusters. He sent a brand new tire to my dealer. Since he couldn't cut them a check to pay for mounting the tire, he talked to them and came to the agreement to pay for the mounting in trade - with another new tire.

I took the bike in, got the new tire mounted and was a happy camper. The dealer was also a happy camper since I'd taken care of the entire thing.

Moral of the story - see who actually provides the warranty and approach them. If the tube was really defective (and not pinched during installation) - bet the manufacturer will provide one free of cost.

YMMV as usual, but probably not a lot..;)
 
http://www.avonmoto.com/tech/warranty - That's the link to Avon's tire warranty. There was a time when if "anything" happened to an Avon in X number of days/miles, they would replace it. Michelin's warranty is similar to Avon's and I'd bet most others are similar - defects in manufacture and materials only. Trying to make a case on a defect isn't easy. I just got a my original purchase price back from Jake Wilson on an Anakee 2 that had bumps appearing in a regular pattern on a front tire. It had 7K miles on it too. Despite web warriors saying it was cupping, "they all do that", etc; to me, Jake Wilson and Michelin it was a manufacturing flaw. NOBODY that I know of covers anything like road hazards on motorcycle tires in a standard warranty. How many of you know somebody who picked up a nail in a relatively new tire? I'm sure that some dealer, somewhere fixed it for free or a discount, but, ALL, that is ALL that I know of had to fix it themselves.

Don't feel too bad, try to get tire companies to cough up some cash when your 55K car tire is toast at 30K.
 
Back
Top