No Spare - No Chance !

Ramblings and thoughts from Neil
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neil
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No Spare - No Chance !

Post by neil » Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:21 pm

Traveling back home from a meeting last Friday afternoon, I unfortunately got a puncture. Or rather should I say I thought the rear of my car had fallen off !

As I rounded a corner all hell broke lose on the car - I couldn't quite understand what had happened as it felt like a) the rear suspension had collapsed or the wheel had. Such was the disruption to the cars handling and ride.

I pull over immediately and was bemused to see nothing untoward - no flat tyre, no broken wheel, no difference in ride height. Furthermore when I look under the car there was nothing wrong either. Odd very odd - I got back in and drove about a car length before coming to an abrupt halt as the same thing happened !

On closer inspection I was no able to see the following:

Image

Yep a spark plug had somehow embedded itself into the tyre - the reason there was no flat was that it had acted like a self tapping plug in the tyre. Trouble was it was sticking out so much that the car was physically lifting in the air when it was at the bottom and it was scratching the plastic wheel arch lining when it was at the top.

With no spare and with no way of moving the car I was a little bit confused as to my next course of action. I quickly began ringing around local tyre dealers. Starting with Sytner's (I knew they'd be the priciest but thought they might be the most accomodating) - the resounding response from them and the next 9 dealers was that they could get me a tyre on either Monday or Tuesday. Not the best news when you are stuck in a side street in the middle of Birmingham. One dealer told me that Michelin had stopped making that size, another claimed he didn't know anything about tyres :)

Finally I got a number of a mobile tyre place, who came to my rescue and after a cringe worthy 20 minutes where he first of all attempted to undo the wheel nuts, which he seriously struggled to do even though his van was fitted with a big compressor. And even worse tried to remove the tyre manually - something we quickly agreed wasn't going to work. He left me with the preverbial 3 wheels on my wagon.

Thankfully he was able to fix the puncture and I was able to drive home. He assured me that the fix was good and that I could run out the tyres life - I'm not too sure on this, but haven't really had chance to look into it as I've been too busy with the family and work.

Anyhow the moral of the story is why do I always seem to be in a position of having punctures in the cars that do not have a spare wheel.

For example:

My Scirocco Gti - spare wheel was too big to fit on front or rear of car - only found out this fact when I got a puncture !
My BMW M5 - no spare just foam (puncture in side wall - foam didn't help!)
My Subaru Impreza Sti-4 - spare too big for the front brakes - found out when I got a puncture in my front wheel !
My Mini Cooper S Works - no spare just foam (see above)

Having said that - I still wouldn't want to drive on run flats !!

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Post by alpina46 » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:49 pm

A spark plug :shock: :shock: :shock: I think that pic should be used for the weekly/monthly/yearly caption comp :lol:
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Post by blacky » Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:22 pm

you never do things by halfs do you neil make sure the spark plug has done no damage to he inside of the wheel
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the start of something good

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Post by v8 ego » Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:16 pm

It's amazing what can get caught in a tyre. A mate of mine managed to get a pair of electrical bull nose pliers embedded in a tyre, bull nose first!!
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Post by thomas v8 » Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:27 pm

Neil, I thought you run softlines on the B8 ? Isn't the wheel shown a dynamic wheel. Did the B8 come without A spare wheel.
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Post by v8 ego » Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:29 pm

thomas v8 wrote:Neil, I thought you run softlines on the B8 ? Isn't the wheel shown a dynamic wheel. Did the B8 come without A spare wheel.
Methinhs 'tis a wheel from the Mini
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Post by neil » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:26 pm

v8 ego wrote:
thomas v8 wrote:Neil, I thought you run softlines on the B8 ? Isn't the wheel shown a dynamic wheel. Did the B8 come without A spare wheel.
Methinhs 'tis a wheel from the Mini
Yep its the Mini

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Post by L8 ALPINA » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:18 pm

A spark plug. :lol: That is just totally mad and unlucky.. :cry:

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Post by thomas v8 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:32 pm

STUPID STUPID me :oops:. That is crazy, if someone told me that happend I would dout them some what,but to see it in a photo is crazy.
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Post by mac » Thu Jun 19, 2008 2:07 pm

Hi Neil,
Did you check the GAP??
:lol: :roll: :lol:

(jesting)
Sorry to hear of your misfortune!

All the more reason to petition BMW/MINI to supplying std. tyres and spare wheels.

How about a POLL on the spares issue?

Mac.

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Post by Dunk » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:30 pm

It's luck of the draw though.

I do 50Kpa+ miles, have done for the last 12 years, and before that drove lorries for four years at 190Kpa miles.

Total punctures = 3 (touch wood).

Two complete blow outs caused by missing cats eyes - the metal claw mount doesn't mix with tyres. One of those at 120mph in a 200sx touring. Not funny.

One on a Scania 143m Tractor unit

That it.

The B3's spare is original and unused - as is it's jack and wheelbrace. Not bad for 94K miles, eight owners and nine years.
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Post by rcshott » Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:54 am

That is bad luck, Neil. It's one of the frustrating parts of running a car, isn't it? So simple, yet so devastating. Plus it often happens at night in the rain/snow or, as you've found, inconvienent :evil:

Humans with all our techno knowledge should be able to improve this...really!

I've said for years that I can't understand why different size wheels/tyres front & rear are fitted. Yep, the makers fit 'em like that...WHY? (I am open to discussion, here). On the track...different story & imperative for best performance.

I know, I know, I'm an old bugger in brain, body'n ways, but for "general street driving" I cannot see the point of front/rear sizes....even for high performance cars. I drive my car as hard as anyone on the street & IMO tyre quality is more important than 'skinny' front tyres for the sake of it. I've always paid premium price for"short milage/high perpfomance" street tyres for years and have never regretted it for safety. (In fact I have often been awarded prizes for "driving on street tyres" at track days)...A-N-D often posted much better times than those on slick or 'race tyres' with thousands spent on extra wheels and tyres. All I do is chug along with my street tyres on old M5 'track' wheels. Won't put my ALPINA wheels to that sort of punnishment/damage. (see pics in my profile). True story!

Also, if tyres are 'directional' they cannot be swaped around. So does anyone carry two spares, one front & one rear?

Front/rear sizes can lead to another problem in that if one front wheel is out of alighment (e.g. slight wheel alignment damage) you MUST fit TWO new tyres. The slightly damaged/feathered tyre can't be re-used by, say, changing from l/front to r/rear! Of course if it's seriously damaged, chuck it anyway.

"Runflats" IMO SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ON ANY CAR UNTIL THE TECHNOLOGY IS 'UP TO SCRATCH'! Manufacturers are using the public as 'guinea pigs':twisted:

I am also quite pissed off with manufactures (including BMW) selling cars with runflats in Australia. It can be hundreds and hundreds of kilometres/miles between towns!!! How silly is that?

An alternative to carrying no spare is to use "tyre weld". But it throws the tyres out of balance. It cannot be used for sidewall damage.
Thoughts anyone? God I love a good argument :!:

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Post by Dunk » Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:13 pm

The difference is tyre widths, front to rear, is to alter the handling characteristics and feel on turn in.

There's also a mild aerodynamic benefit of having narrower tyres up front.
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Re: No Spare - No Chance !

Post by Chas » Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:02 pm

neil wrote:As I rounded a corner all hell broke lose on the car - I couldn't quite understand what had happened as it felt like a) the rear suspension had collapsed or the wheel had. Such was the disruption to the cars handling and ride.
I'm surprised at you Neil... the symptoms of bad handling could be caused by a number of factors. However, viewed in conjunction with serious compression loss on 25% of your cylinders, the problem should have been obvious before you got out of the car :lol:

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Blow out

Post by JEP700 » Sun Jul 20, 2008 3:18 pm

As I rounded a corner all hell broke lose on the car - I couldn't quite understand what had happened as it felt like a) the rear suspension had collapsed or the wheel had. Such was the disruption to the cars handling and ride.
A spark plug - now thats something new !

I had a fountain pen enter the rear tyre like that on my Honda Fireblade a few years back, there was a loud band as I rounded a corner and when I sat up everything appearred to be Ok...

...until I got onto the A13 London bound. The tyre gave out at 120mph and scared the !@$t out of me when I tried to bring the thing to a stop bouncing around over all 3 lanes ! It looked like a stone at first embedded in the tyre, but the dealer showed me the whole half of the pen he extracted when I went in to collect and pay the bill... it kind of explained all the blue ink over the bike frame.

One consolation - I think it was one of those upmarket pens that probably cost a bit more than my £200 tyre replacement, so the owner of the pen might have been a bit more out of pocket than me :D

Nice to see you held it on the road, and I too have concerns about the no spare tyre problems with the newer cars. My new B3 has a tyre repair kit instread of a spare. I think I will make sure my RAC cover is up to retrieving me when the hole in my tyre is larger than a repair kit can handle :?
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