Fascinating information. I will remember that in case I come across a similar problem.

Thanks very much.
Adam..

Interestingly enough, for what it's worth, with my first RRS (2008 / 2.7 TDV6 ) I asked the dealer here (in Adelaide, SA) when in for a srevice to do a 5 way rotation of my wheels, as the spare had never been used and the other 4 had been on the car since new. I cannot remember the kilometres travelled, but there was still ample tread left on the road tyres. All wheels were matching.

When I went to pick up the car they said they wouldn't do the rotation to include the spare as the difference in diameter between that and the other tyres was too great and it would cause the gearbox some grief. They went on to relate some horror stories customers have had by running odd size or uneven tyres on vehicles. Now I was somewhat horrified at that! My next set of tyres were bought as a set of 5, and I embarked on a 5,000km 5 way rotation policy.

When I bought my current RRS (2013 SDV6, fitted with the steel rimmed spare) I immediately purchased another wheel to match the road wheels and still rotate my tyres every 5,000 kms. The steel wheel is kept as an emergency only.

Lew.

One of them is an Acellera. I'd quickly get rid of that one!

Hi Do you think this could be the problem I am having at the moment with my RRS Ive just had 4 new tyres on at main dealers now a week later Im getting a transmision fault flash up saying Ive lost some gears,
no first gear now and really hard work to pull away

are they the oem size tyres

The tyres were replaced with exactly the same make tyres that come off. I checked they were all the same and they were. the night we were travelling home when the transmission warning flashed up we managed to get back to our place, in the morning I was worried how I would get through town to the garage but started up and it must have righted itself because its been perfect since.
my ignition light which stayed on longer than it should was a alternater problem which they renwed on warrenty.
so hopefully alls ok now

Very useful post and thread

Hopefully another useful addition to this post.

I had this issue appear out of nowhere a week ago and came across this thread while trying to diagnose it. I have 4 matched tyres, with fairly even wear so was initially worried that I was totally screwed......but then on a hunch i decided to double check tyre pressures.

These things must be very sensitive, front OS tyre was 9psi below the other front one,(slow puncture). Got it repaired and back up to the right pressure - gearbox operation returned to normal.

Worth a double check before rolling your RRS to the stealer!

Wow. I had exactly this when I had to drive home using the emergency replacement wheel. It was driving me bonkers. It would go up the box until around 4th then would red-line the revs until I shifted the gear lever over to the left and back again, it then changed up.

Great detective work, Paul.

I had a very similar problem with my last X5, I changed the wheels from the standard 19's to a set of 20's, All was fine until the traction control was kicking in on perfectly dry roads and only when leaving a roundabout and peeling off to the left, I could not fathom out the reason for this happening but on doing a bit of research on BMW forum i found out that the rolling diameter of the wheels/tyres had a significant effect on the transfer box, On Measuring all four wheel/tyre diameters i found a big difference in one of the front wheels. This difference was enough to wind up the transfer case to the point that had i not changed back to my standard 19" wheels and tyres then i would have been looking for a new transfer case and front differential. All was peachy when back on the standard wheels, This was also an eye opener for my BMW trained indie mechanic who had never come across this before.

3.6 tdv8. blew a trye on a 22" 22/285/30 ... put a standard 20" stockwheel on to get me around, by the time i got home i thought transmision problem

RRSTDV8 wrote:

I was responding to your saying you weren't sure what difference an inch difference in size would make.

Ff'nar!

An excellent piece of detective work.

With cars that have a flat-tyre warning, even a small difference in diameter can trigger it. My mother's BMW 1 series being an example.

Yet again a fault created by incompetence of the person putting the wrong tyres on a RRS and creating a fault that isn’t the cars fault
Well done for finding this info, let’s hope no lasting damage to your gearbox Michael
2013 RRS diesel Autobiography Dynamic

I had this exact same problem on my 2009 Tdv8 , the car had Nexians all round and having seen the issue on the American site I changed my front tyres to Pirelli scorpions and the gearbox late change up fault disappeared completely , and now the car has done another 10k on the new tyres the fault is slowly starting to reappear, and that’s even after me doing a semi flush and filter change on the gearbox, so at least it worked for a while .

Always good to hear things like this that people experience so we can bear it in mind as a possible cause when the stealerships just immediately jump to costly solutions. I am the darkness before the storm