motown

When buying a new Porsche 911 should you buy rim & tire insurance or not. Wonder what the popular opinion is?

G650

Do you mean insurance on just the rim only, or the actual entire wheel?

motown

I think my dealer always asks if I want rim insurance. They always have a damaged rim in the finance office. Not sure if it covers both wheel and rim but for sure rim.

I do sometimes and haven't others. Cost between 1,400 and 2,400 depending on car and length of term.

Tupper

Sounds like a rip off to me

carson2

I had tire & wheel coverage for my 4500+ lb audi S6 with 35-series tires, and it cost a couple hundred bucks to save me the cost of three Pilot Sport 4S 20" tires over a couple of years, one due to a nail in the sidewall area, and two due to pinch flats. On the 911, I don't see much risk due to pinch flats because of the lighter weight. And at the rate I'm expecting to wear through tires on this thing, I'm not sure it would be worth it in terms of saving an occasional repurchased tire. I have never damaged a rim in my 30+ years of driving, but I also am not driving in a pothole crazy area (infrastructure in north TX is mostly good). I would say it depends on the types of roads you routinely drive.

Bluehighways

What are the roads like in your neck of the woods and can you reasonably dodge any serious potholes.
Where I live now, I'd have to really try to find a bad section of pavement that might damage a tire & rim. But if I lived on the road I grew up on in Pennsylvania; I might have to seriously consider this sort of insurance.

TK42ONE

I've had wheel and tire insurance on my TTS, RS3 and Q8 and each time it paid for itself through new tire and north texas pothole. Small piece of mind for 2k IMHO.

FrankAT

I think it really depends on how the policy is underwritten. The one I bought will replace the tire entirely for a nail that could ordinarily be patched. If the wheel is unrepairable it is replaced.

Living in a big metro with tons of construction made it worth it to me. I've had several nails and have had the tires replaced without any issue.

svkarl

Do you mean insurance on just the rim only, or the actual entire wheel?

I see what you did there, spot on! Very well done!

mdrobc1213

Always ask me for wheel insurance....most of the time...cost of policy is not worth a repair from a good aftermarket shop...unless you drive in a really jacked up place/roads and/or are very good at hitting and not avoiding road hazards! I have never bought it...won't start now.

ldamelio

Inherently odds are stacked in their favor - heavy profit margin. All insurance is just gambling with the odds heavily stacked in the house's favor. Insurance only makes sense for potential catastrophic losses (health, liability, life if you have young kids and limited resources.) A wheel and tire don't fall into this category.

detansinn

Find yourself a good local wheel repair guy. You can repair and/or recondition a wheel (or wheels) for a fraction of the cost of these so-called wheel insurance plans.

Mb111

Agreed that this is a subjective decision in which you should evaluate the factors that are specific to your own situation. Where you live / the quality of the roads and to a little lesser extent how you drive largely determines if wheel insurance is a good deal for YOU. It's not a 'total ripoff' at all, for some people, and in my case I feel like I'm pulling one over on the dealership for the price of it. I'm in a suburb of NYC and because this state is effectively bankrupt the road maintenance, if you want to call it that, is **** poor. Some of the roads here look marginally better than Beirut in the '80's. I swerved to avoid a pothole on the highway yesterday afternoon that had to be between 6-12 inches deep that stemmed from a road plow ripping up the pavement following over a foot of snow. If it was night time there would have been no way I would have seen it in time to avoid it doing 65+.

My last 911 I didn't get the insurance and I went through 3 tires from 2 nail punctures on the highway and one full tire/wheel set from a broken wheel unsuccessfully avoiding a pothole - a very unlucky couple of years, yes, I know. I easily paid a couple grand in parts/labor. This time I went for the more expensive Spyder wheels on my 992 which are 3x the cost of the stock rims I had on the last one ($7,000 per tire/wheel on Suncoast), so if I have to replace even one Spyder wheel over the term of the insurance, it would more than pay for the cost of the entire insurance ($1,600 or something close to that, I can't remember exactly what I paid). An insurance policy that more than pays for itself after the FIRST claim allows me to have not a care in the world when I'm cruising. When you hear a loud pop or feel a drop followed by the unmistakable heavy clunk that you've gone over something you shouldn't have and 30 seconds later you see the tire PSI warning light and hear the bells of impending doom, you're going to wish you had that insurance.

If you live in Florida or another temperate state where road quality is not an issue, this is a harder decision to make, but do what makes you feel more comfortable and don't listen to people on this board that poo poo that decision.

michael818

Like all insurance, it's a waste of money if you don't need it but great when you do need it. I took the policy on my last 2 cars, the cost of one replacement OEM wheel pays for the policy. One thing I would like to point out that is if you sell the car and the insurance is still in effect you get a pro-rated refund on the policy.

malibu515

After market repair


is cheaper. The wheel and tire package repair is rarely used.