I have always had several different cars due to my being a terminal carnut. For this reason I have always had a car or two that set in the garage for extended periods of time. My 300E does this now and my Kumho tires have flatspotted really bad. I have not noticed severe flat spotting with other tire brands.

Does anyone have experience or technical knowledge regarding this? Since I drive my 300E very little due to working at home, if I put a good expensive set of tires on the car, will they flatspot also? If so, I might be better off just replacing the $36 each Kumhos every few years rather than laying out big bucks for tires.

Any experience or technical knowledge with this?

Thanks and have a great day,

Larry,

Interesting that you comment on this - I am in the market for tires on my 300D & scoped out some options on Tirerack.com. Someone else posted a feedback comment on one of the tire brands, saying that the brand they purchased flat-spotted overnight...

I have a similar situation with some of my cars - tire brand doesn't seem to matter - I still get some flatspotting!

Bryan in NC

They always had a thumping flat spot for the first few miles until they warmed up. Note that nowadays most of the best handling radial tires are built with an additional "cap ply" over the belts, often nylon or aramid. So the thumps are back from the same source -- nylon takes a set and has to be warmed up to lose it. For my part, being an ancient handling fanatic, I'm happy to put up with a little thumping for the first few blocks with the brand new TireRack BFG Traction TAs on my '86 BMW 524TD in order to have the best turn-in reflexes I can afford, but some of you may want to avoid tires with those extra plies over the belts.

The TAs paid for themselves 6 hours after I had them mounted when a kid in a small pick-up tried a left turn in front of me -- instant lane change and then back again to avoid oncoming traffic, and I missed his rear end by all of 8 inches.