How hard are the side walls on Bridgestone RE050As?

[Luckyone]

We can't put up with the F13 6 Series on its runflats any more, it's not just bad, it's down write dangerous. You can feel the wheel bounce on the road when you go over a slightly rough surface, if you are on a bend at the time it sticks you well over the centre line.

So we are dropping down from the 20" rims to 19"s & getting non runflats tyres.

Checking the actual size of tyres Bridgestones will fit very well with the new rims, it did have 245/35-20 & 275/30-20s on it, but they were quite a bit under that size when I checked them, a good 10 - 15cm. That meant the front was a bit stretched over a 8.5" rim I don't want that. The rear sat just right on a 9.0" rim. So the correctly sized Bridgestones will fit perfectly on the new 8.5" & 9.5" rims.

The only thing I'm bothered about is the Cerb came with Bridgestone S02s back in the late 90s & the side walls on them were rock hard, almost as bad as a run flat. The tyre dealer tells me the RE050A are nothing like as hard as the old S02s were, but I'd like a second opinion as I don't want to end up in the same boat with the new tyres!


Just in case anyone was wandering these are the dimensions Bridgestone give for the RE050A:


Front – 245/40-19 ………… Tread width 248mm/Overall inflated width 258mm

Rear – 275/35-19 ………… Tread width 278mm/Overall inflated width 289mm