Similar to this, I had a nightmare yesterday. My mother in law died last week and we had set aside yesterday to get a lot of things done prior to going away on holiday next week. When we arrived at her house (very remote and 40 miles from our home) I noticed that one tyre was really flat. It must have just deflated as I hadn’t had a warning. The car has no spare wheel or space saver and, annoyingly, BMW no longer fit run-flats as standard (they were absolutely brilliant).
Called Motability tyre line and was told RAC would take two and a half hours to get to us. I told them that wasn’t acceptable for two reasons. Firstly, my wife was in the car (full time wheelchair user), we couldn’t get access to a toilet and we had an appointment 90 minutes later with a registrar to register the death. The said that they’d sort out a taxi but by then inputting the job again as an urgent priority the RAC arrival time suddenly changed to 30 minutes.
RAC guy turns up, pulls out a nail, does a repair, blows up the tyre and then hears air hissing – from another hole (this time with nothing in it). Repairs the second hole. Didn’t seal. Tried again. Still didn’t seal. As a last resort he squirts the can of BMW repair gunk into the tyre and that worked, so we could drive again. Full marks to the guy – he was great.
I then remembered that Kwik Fit never seem to have tyres that I need in stock, so I phoned the one nearest to us and, thankfully, they had a BMW specific Bridgestone that matches the other 3 on the car, so I booked an appointment for today. I wasn’t impressed that it took Motability over half an hour to authorise the tyre as it wasted my time and the fitters.
Anyway, it’s now dawned on me that when we go on holiday next week and I have a car full of suitcases, my wife and her wheelchair, if we have another puncture I don’t have a can of the gunk to do a temporary repair and apparently the RAC don’t carry it. I think I will call Motability next week, but does anyone know if Motability pay for a replacement canister and, if so, can I get the BMW one that was used yesterday or would it be a generic one (I guess they all do the same thing, but it would need to work with the BMW machine that it came with)?