Hooked Up on Bridgestone Biais BT020's

[BruceHarrisJr]

Just a brief note on what happened to me yesterday. I was traveling east on I-20 in downtown Atlanta about to make a sharp left hand (decreasing radius) turn to merge onto I-75/85 northbound. Road surface was wet from rain and I found myself in the middle of my lane with lots of oil residue. Speed was about 60mph when entering curve. Rear tire slipped a good deal while leaned over and in the middle of my lane (I know better) but then (Thank you very much!) regained traction. If these OEM Bridgestone Biais ply BT020's last as long as my former radial ply BT020's did I'll continue to use them.

Now, if someone would please tell me once more why BMW made the biais ply standard on the '05 LT; I was perfectly happy with the radial BT020.

[WMann]

Hi Bruce.

When I buried a 10mm x 52mm long bolt in my 05 rear tire with only 1200 miles on the clock I had a time trying to find the Bias Ply Bridgestone tire. I finally got hooked up with a man a Bridgestone USA who was over motorcycle tires, he told me that BMW had Bridgestone to change the tires to bias ply due to the rake change in the front end of the 05 LT. BMW according to him wanted a stronger less flexible tire for the 05. So I got the two Distributor part numbers for the front and rear tire and gave them to Ron at Arizona Motorsports and had him to order the tire for me. I also gave the numbers to Carolina BMW here in Greensboro NC and told them about the change, but to this day they still don't carry the bias ply tires.

As for tire milage I was only able to get around four thousand miles out of the front radial Bridgestone before it was shot. I got over eleven thousand miles out of the bias ply front tire before I changed it. For me the bias ply tires have had the same traction on wet roads and I'm getting a lot more miles out of them, so I'm sold. I have no desires to go back to radials or Metzlers.

I hope this helps

[donsobeck]

Wayne: Will you share the part #s with use for the tires?

DON

[WMann]

Hi Don. There were two different sets of part numbers for dealers to order their tires depending on which of two distributors they ordered from. I threw away the piece of paper that I had the numbers written on a long time ago. Sorry I couldn't help.

[BecketMa]

B'Stone web lists both radials and both bias on their web site.