My Good Year run flats on my '99 kicked my behind late Friday afternoon. Wanted to change my stock powdered coated early C5 mags out for a set of chrome Thinspoke wheels that I purchased. I own a later model rim clamp tire machine in my home shop not the older style tire machine as I once had years back. Used it plenty of times to change tires and wheels on all my Classic cars, family cars and work Vans without any problem. Found out the hard way that I could not deal with the GoodYear Run Flats that are currently mounted on my '99. Took one front wheel off of the car and started to demount the tire. Busted my rearend and destroyed the factory wheel as it got gouged pretty badly. Called one of the repair shops I deal with being I sell auto parts for a living. The shop said that even with their Rim Clamp tire machine they can not do Corvette Wheels with Run Flats and just send them out. Just curious if anyone else ever had problems working with these tires as far as mounting and demounting is concerned. If I would of known better ahead of time I would of just went down to my nearest Good Year tire dealer to have them do the worked and payed the Piper so to say. I am sure they must charge a good amount of money to make the swap and rebalance. Anyone know what the going rate is out there these days and who I can trust with the right equipment? There must be a special tire machine for doing Run Flats I am guessing. I have always done most of my own work that needed to be done on my cars myself but as I said I ran into something now that I can't handle with the equipment I have on hand.

 

I have used my local Discount Tire store for my '97 and '03 Coupe and also for my '07 Z06 with no issues, in mounting and dismounting the Run Flat.

 

Goodyear charges around $36/tire for mounting and balancing. They do tire work for me on my other cars. I've never had Goodyear do my Corvette Tires, prefer someone who uses Hunter equipment so that my wheels have less of chance of getting damaged.

Run flats are tough tire to demount/mount because the sidewalls by design are a harder tighter compound and are more difficult to stretch enough to get over the rim of the wheel.

 

I've used my local Discount Tire for over a dozen years; I get to watch in the bay area and inspect/ask questions, drive my own car in, and never seen them have a problem with Corvette wheels, be it C4 sawblades, C4 GS style or C5 thin spoke.

 

@ffas23, thanks for sharing. did not know that as well.

 

I am about to head out to my nearest Goodyear Tire Store roughly 6-7 miles away. Stopped in their earlier this morning after taking the wife out for breakfast. Got a quote of $147 plus N.J. 7% tax to do the job of swapping my Run Flats to my other set of Mag Wheels. Wish I would of known better being I would of saved a factory original wheel to my car although I don't have any plans of ever putting them back on the car again in the future. The other 3 original wheels I have are perfect with only 36k miles on them. Hope this saves another forum member here from going through what I went through. I am one who doesn't like to fail at anything I do as it is eating at me even through today not making for a good weekend. I did nothing different then I would of done demounting any other tire with my Rim Clamp Tire Machine. That is the problem. Kind of shot myself in the foot on Friday. Doesn't feel too good.

 

I would echo the sentiments concerning Discount Tire. I have several experiences with my former '00 Coupe changing from RF to non RF's and with my '99 FRC changing to Magnesium wheels.

I just talk with the manager prior to them pulling my car inside, express my concerns & can watch from the bay area. No problems. Good luck.

 

Wal-Mart did mine for $5 per wheel

 

Just a update. Just got back from the GoodYear Tire Store and I am fit to be tied. After lugging my 8 tires and wheels into the Back area of the shop and going to the front office in front of the store I found that the $147 plus tax that I was quoted in the morning to change over my GoodYear Run Flats to my other Mag Wheels just jumped up another $100 more. Believe it or not I am being charged another $24.98 per wheel to exhange the TPS Sensors from one wheel to the other. No different then changing out a Chrome Tire Valve. One only has to take 1 nut off and take the TPS Valve out of the rim hole and transfer it to the other wheel. Highway Robbery if you ask me. Its seems that today everyone wants to make a homerun on you. I may be oldschool being I have been around awhile and will be turning 60 years old in a few months but I have never seen anything like this. $256 to swap out 4 tires from one set of rims to another set. What a rip off the Good Year Tire Store is in my New Jersey neighborhood if you were to ask me. Never will I ever go to Good Year again for anything and surely I will never recommend them to anyone.

 

Local shop just did mine for $20 per with high speed Balancing .
He only wanted $16 but with the sensors I felt $20 was fair.

 

Charley2004 were they Run Flat Tires you had done with TPS Sensors swapped from one wheel to another?

 

It just depends on how new of a machine the tire store has. You can tell instantly when you hit the pedal if they have enought "umph" to mount the low profile run flats...

even the not RF's are a pita sometimes in say a 235/30/18 or 19...those suckers have just a stiff sidewall.

They obviously must be mounted on a "european" style tire machine...the one that actually clamps the rim @ the bead and spins the wheel will there is a stationary "arm" that swings over, locks in and allows you to pry/push the tire bead down and into the drop center

 

Actually this is the type of tire machine I have in my own work shop. If you go back and read my first post I mention I have a later model Rim Clamp Tire Machine. From talking to someone in the Auto Repair Business I understand they have machines now that come with a 2nd arm that pushes down on the opposite side of the tire while mounting them on this type of Tire Machine. This is what maybe required in mounting these Run Flat Tires as they are a bear of a tire to mount and dismount from what I saw. I was able to dismount although with problems but could not completely mount the top lip of the tire only able to get 3/4 of the top lip of the tire onto the new rim with my machine. As I mentioned it also caused damage to one of the original factory mags that I dismounted the first tire from. This was something I never experienceed before in changing out any other wheels and tires that I have delt with including both metal and aluminum wheels.

 

Yes they were Goodyear run flats. He did a great job.
I went from wagon weels to thin spoke,look great now.

 

Picked up my tires and wheels late Sunday afternoon. Wheels were not cleaned when I picked them up as there was Rubber Lube all around the edge of the rims and on other parts of the wheel that almost looked like a milky colored wax. Anyway one of the Goodyear techs mentioned that it would all clean right off. Paid the man with my credit card and brought them home figuring I would put them on Monday sometime in the late morning early afternoon. Well I mounted them and proceeded to do some cleaning. Right now once again I am not a happy camper. 3 of the 4 new wheels have scratched up chrome around the bead area of the wheel. Some light scratches and some heavy scratches. One area is so ruff that you can cut your finger on it if you kept rubbing it. I believe this is why Rubber Lube was left on the wheel to hide these scratches. For this I was just charged $256 from a professional to transfer my Goodyear Run Flat tires from one set of wheels to my new Chrome Thin Spoke Wheels that are now scratched. A real professional job. On top of everything they also scratched and chipped the powder coating off of 3 of my original factory mags while demounting the tires off of them. Put in a call at about 7:30 last night for the Good Year store manager who wasn't there at the time. I let the person I spoke to know of my problem and he said we should be able to work something out. I asked if they had insurance to cover this? Would like to know what the forum members think about it on this forum as to how I should handle this being I should be getting a phone call sometime today from the Store Manager.

 

I've had both a local Goodyear store and another shop work on the runflats for me. Goodyear charged an arm and a leg compared to the other shop and both did a good job of not messing up the wheels in the process. The runflats, while a nice safety feature, are a PITA to work on.

 

Sorry about your experiences with that store, Fred/Rick. Hope you get them to make it right. Inexcusable to do that work and charge that much.

When I got rid of the runflats on my 4000-mile Coupe bought a couple years back, I watched the guys at Firestone struggle to get them off the rims without damage. It's a good shop, has an up-to-date tire changer and the best two guys respect nice wheels and do their best. But I was sweating blood, wondering what my up-until-then perfect polished wheels were going to look like when they got done. I was lucky and left with only the most trivial marks on a couple of the wheels. The tires, which I later sold, did pick up a cut on one. If I was a tire changer at that shop and I saw run-flats coming through the door I would take my break or head for the bathroom.

 

You need to speak with the manager of that store.
Good luck.

 

wow. I've had a wide variety of tire places do work on my cars and never once has anybody screwed anything up. When it's expensive wheels or something on my Vette they take extra good care of them for me. The local dealer i have do work(if i don't do it myself) is good to me and let me sit there and watch them do the work

 

Here's a update to the problem I have with Goodyear. First of all I gave a call to the Service Manager at my local Goodyear Tire Store where the work was performed earlier today. I was suppose to get a call back from him on Tuesday after leaving a message on Monday about the problem but he never called me back. Anyway the manager wanted to see my car with the wheels on them. Since getting the wheels and tires back on Sunday my car had been sitting up on my 2 post lift in my Pole Barn behind my home. I put the wheels back on the car Monday. Well I set the car down and backed it away from the lift and noticed the Right Rear Tire looked like it was low of air. Sure enough it was completely out of air. My guess is that either the TPS sensor is now bad or the rubber seal may be defective. I filled the tire up with air and drove it down to the Goodyear Dealer. He came out and I pointed out the scratches in the rim and also showed him 2 of the original factory rims that were also scratched as they demounted my Run Flats from them to make the switch. He did a lot of rubbing with his fingers on all of my rims. Anyway he wanted to know what I expected him to do. I just told him to comp the $256 bill and I would walk away. The scratches are there and they may of messed up one of my TPS sensors. From a few feet away my 59 year old eyes can see some of the scratches and they don't look that bad but I know that they are there. The manager agreed to comp the bill. I think I let Goodyear get away cheap but I wanted to put and end to my problem. On the way home it showed on the dash that I was down to 17 pounds of air in the RR Tire and when I got home it was 16 pounds so the air is escaping the tire pretty fast. Apparently the TPS Sensor is working but leaking. Does anyone know if GM sells the rubber seals for the TPS Sensors for my '99 Coupe? If so does anyone know the part number by any chance?