BMW’s New Tire Kit Fills Up Your Flat While You Drive
The magnetically attached inflator requires almost no work, and it keeps the punctured tire filled with air and sealant as you drive along. The post BMW’s New Tire Kit Fills Up Your Flat While You Drive appeared first on The Drive.
BMW just quietly released an interesting piece of kit that could really come in handy when your car gets a flat. It’s an inflator that you simply pull out of your trunk, magnetically attach to your wheel, and drive off. With one of these, it doesn’t matter if you know how to change a tire or not, and there’s no time wasted trying to plug or fill a punctured tire in a precarious situation. The machine does almost everything for you.
It’s called the Seal & Drive Tire Kit, and it seems almost too good to be true. To operate it, you unscrew the tire’s valve stem cap, couple the kit’s hose to it, and then attach its five prongs to the wheel’s five lug holes. It magnetically and mechanically holds itself in place from there. Then, once you press the power button, the kit will start inflating the tire with both air and sealant to fill the hole. Once the tire reaches 20 psi or more, you can drive off with the kit still attached to the wheel. It will continue to inflate the tire as you drive so the pressure never falls to a dangerous level.
You can’t drive faster than 50 mph with the inflater attached, nor should you drive further than 120 miles—in that way, it’s kind of like a space-saver spare or a donut. Either way, both should be enough to get you home or at least to the nearest service center where you can have the rubber taken care of. I assume that over 50 mph, the added weight on the outside of the wheel would cause some imbalance, so the speed limit is understandable.
This obviously won’t work for a tire blowout or something more drastic; that said, it should work perfectly for a small puncture like a nail hole. That’s enough to help most people back on the road in a pinch. It’s also more convenient than changing or plugging a tire on the side of the road.
The Seal & Drive Tire Kit will be standard equipment on any new 5 Series after March production. BMW told The Drive that the kit will make it to other models as well, but there isn’t a set timeframe for when and which models.
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The post BMW’s New Tire Kit Fills Up Your Flat While You Drive appeared first on The Drive.
