Tired of tires
Mar. 24th, 2007 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoSome of you will remember that I traded my 9 year old car last fall, and one of the reasons was that it needed all new wheels. They were beginning to leak air, and I had to top up the tires weekly. It had a lot of other nagging maintenance issues too.
Well, I thought I'd be avoiding the tire problem at least for a couple of years. Nope. Last night I left work to go home and just as I got outside of town I started hearing that thumping sound that usually means a tire is flat or at least headed for flat. Sure enough, the tire pressure warning light came on and I had to hunt for a safe place to pull over, not easy on most of our roads. I found one after about a mile, and got out in time to see the right rear tire gradually descending into collapse.
Thank the gods the weather has moderated and it wasn't raining. There was an hour of light left too. I used the cell phone to call home and leave a message, then set about figuring out how to unstow the spare and change the tire. The Escape has one of those tires that is stored under the back end, pulled up against the body by a cable and winch. While I was trying to figure out the way to put the jack together, Gary called me back to find out where I was, and said he was on his way with the big lug wrench and jack. OK.
However, other than some difficulty operating the tiny toy jack, I had managed to swap the tire by the time he arrived. The lug nuts were not frozen, and came right off. The wheel was not seized to the brake drum, and came right off. The spare descended smoothly from its cubby under the car, once I figured out how to crank it down. It wouldn't have been fun in nasty weather or in the dark with cars rushing by, but I guess it was a good rehearsal for the more difficult situation.
Gary arrived as I was heaving the flat tire into the rear compartment. He had called the Ford dealer, just a couple of miles back up the road in the direction I had come, and they said I could drop the car and tire off there and they'd repair the tire in the morning. Because of the pressure sensors in the wheel, you are supposed to have only a dealer fix flats. I know, some will say that's a rip off, but our dealer is quite reasonable and very helpful about rushing a job or squeezing you into the schedule. Went back, left the car and keys, rode home with Gary in his car.
This morning the dealer called to tell me the tire couldn't be repaired. The leak was a puncture all right, but it was a nail in the sidewall, perpendicular to the wheel and parallel to the road surface. I don't see how that could be an accident. It appears that someone deliberately drove a nail into the side of my tire with a hammer or mallet while it was parked in the library lot on Friday. Why? I don't know. It will cost me about a hundred dollars to get it fixed, plus being without a vehicle for at least three days because of the weekend.
Well, I thought I'd be avoiding the tire problem at least for a couple of years. Nope. Last night I left work to go home and just as I got outside of town I started hearing that thumping sound that usually means a tire is flat or at least headed for flat. Sure enough, the tire pressure warning light came on and I had to hunt for a safe place to pull over, not easy on most of our roads. I found one after about a mile, and got out in time to see the right rear tire gradually descending into collapse.
Thank the gods the weather has moderated and it wasn't raining. There was an hour of light left too. I used the cell phone to call home and leave a message, then set about figuring out how to unstow the spare and change the tire. The Escape has one of those tires that is stored under the back end, pulled up against the body by a cable and winch. While I was trying to figure out the way to put the jack together, Gary called me back to find out where I was, and said he was on his way with the big lug wrench and jack. OK.
However, other than some difficulty operating the tiny toy jack, I had managed to swap the tire by the time he arrived. The lug nuts were not frozen, and came right off. The wheel was not seized to the brake drum, and came right off. The spare descended smoothly from its cubby under the car, once I figured out how to crank it down. It wouldn't have been fun in nasty weather or in the dark with cars rushing by, but I guess it was a good rehearsal for the more difficult situation.
Gary arrived as I was heaving the flat tire into the rear compartment. He had called the Ford dealer, just a couple of miles back up the road in the direction I had come, and they said I could drop the car and tire off there and they'd repair the tire in the morning. Because of the pressure sensors in the wheel, you are supposed to have only a dealer fix flats. I know, some will say that's a rip off, but our dealer is quite reasonable and very helpful about rushing a job or squeezing you into the schedule. Went back, left the car and keys, rode home with Gary in his car.
This morning the dealer called to tell me the tire couldn't be repaired. The leak was a puncture all right, but it was a nail in the sidewall, perpendicular to the wheel and parallel to the road surface. I don't see how that could be an accident. It appears that someone deliberately drove a nail into the side of my tire with a hammer or mallet while it was parked in the library lot on Friday. Why? I don't know. It will cost me about a hundred dollars to get it fixed, plus being without a vehicle for at least three days because of the weekend.
