[TaigaTii]

We took delivery of our AW 1M last Thursday (Feb 16) on Vancouver Island.

Since I have been agitating about a spare tire solution for this car for long road trips I decided to purchase the 17” alloy space saver wheel and tire (part number 36-11-0-445-045 set “emergency wheel”) from the dealer. BMW (worldwide) lists this set as the one which is compatible with the 1M and the M3. The set was sent to the dealer from Vancouver. This was the last one in Canada and there were no more, apparently, available from Germany. This set wasn’t inexpensive ($362.00 plus tax Canadian). The dealer guaranteed that it would fit the 1M and I almost took this for gospel. On further thought I asked the dealer to test fit this to our 1M. Good thing!

This wheel will not fit over the front brakes of the 1M! I repeat – THIS WHEEL WILL NOT FIT OVER THE FRONT BRAKES OF THE 1M! And, hence it should not fit the M3 either! The dealer was shocked and refunded our cost with a humble apology and a promise to let BMW know about their misrepresentation in no uncertain terms. This is pretty bad on BMW’s part and I wonder how many folks around the world have purchased this 17” set for their M3s or 1Ms without checking for fit (gs/e60/1m/? in Flanders on post #35 on this string ordered one recently)? Imagine the frustration of trying to deal with a shredded front tire beside the highway and not being able to fit this space saver?! BMW should be taken to task for this error!

So it’s back to the quest. I have found the technical tire/rim info on here very educational, especially when it comes to the rolling diameter of the rim/tire and how close this comes to our setups front and rear. The rears, with the diff situation, appears to be critical so that it is not damaged by a slow short drive to service with a less than good size space saver on one side. Thanks to MDORPHN and Dackelone for info on determining rolling diameters.

e82 overall rear tire height (dia) in inches

135i rear tire 245/35R18 = 24.75
mini spare 125/80R17 = 24.87
1M rear tires 265/35R19 = 26.35
The bmw's mini spare tire is quite close in overal diameter to the 135i rear tire height. Less than 0.5%. But for the 1M it's 6% smaller. Since BMW lists this spare as approved - i'd say as long as your full size spare tire is within 6% in dia you should be ok. Should. ?

My next move will be to look further into the 18” SS steel spare offered by Bimmerzone that they show by video clip fitting on the front of the e9X series of M3s (so it should fit the 1M?). See my post #22 in this string. By my calculation the rolling diameter of the Bimmerzone set-up (145/70R18) would be 25.99 (say 26) inches, which sits closely between the diameters of both the front and rear OEMs and is better sized than the alloy SS spare- if it would have fit over the front brakes.

pete