I was driving a rented Ford Explorer and had a flat in Death Valley. It had a spare, but no jack. Luckily it went flat at Furnace Creek, where we had a room. We had been up in Titus Canyon earlier in the day…getting stuck out there would have been rather unpleasant.
Checking the spare and jack when buying a used car is important too. I bought a “certified” truck from a Toyota dealer and discovered the extension bar (for lowering the spare and cranking the jack) was missing. An important thing to have when you’re traveling cross-country! The dealer tried to hose me on the “certified” spare, too–it was some kind of gnarly mud tire mounted on a non-standard rim.
If this thread has done anything for me, it did get me to check out the spare tire system on my ’06 Pathfinder.
Oh I have looked at it before. And yep, everything seemed to be in place. But I never actually took it out and examined it.
Since it seems that any flat tire happens in the worst of times, I looked closer. Gotta be able to do this in the dark, in the rain.
It’s all nicely tucked under a cover at the very rear inside. Open the rear hatch, interior lights come on and flip up the panel. Nissan gives you a bit of space to store some extra tools and perhaps a pair of gloves or poncho or something.
When you bust open a knuckle changing the tire, the first aid kit is right there! Nissan thought of everything
Eh…. I am coming to understand why some car manufacturers are not including a spare. I haven’t had to change a tire in years. And it is pretty rare for me to see someone do it by the side of the road.
But when you live and regularly drive 10-20 miles from anything that could be considered help, I’ll take the extra weight, gladly.
Which puts your Toyota in the same class as the cars that don’t have a spare. Actually worse. You might think you have a spare, when in fact it is flat, and you don’t have a factory supplied pump, like the cars that don’t come with a spare have, either.
A flat spare is right up there with a bird cage full of bat manure as one of the most useless things ever.
Y’know, one of the things that most pleased me about my '99 Camry when I bought it new was its full-size spare. Which actually got used! But of course, I ALSO drive around with a pump, just in case I can avoid having to swap the tire. As others have mentioned, tire technology has gotten to the point where actual blowouts (save an actual manufactuting defect) are rare. And let’s be honest, even with spares, a lot of people will rather call AAA to change a tire than do it themselves, specially in traffic.
Around these here parts, the regulations manual for the annual safety/emissions inspection actually says that the inspector may demand to see the jack and spare. I do suppose that having the owner’s manual state that the vehicle does NOT come with a spare and jack should be acceptable evidence…
I would like to point out that I rented a Pontiac Grand Prix from Enterprise at Chicago Midway and I know for sure it had a spare. I did not use the spare, but I did get into the tool kit to use the tire tool to uncover grave markers.
It was a nice car. My daughter and I really enjoyed it. I guess we didn’t have the top-of-the-line spare-free model.
From a class I took last year regarding extrications on “high tech” vehicles, on many higher end new cars (Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, etc), there are a couple of reasons for not having a spare tire:
The people who buy those cars don’t/won’t/can’t change a tire. Instead, there’s a button on the dash you press when there’s a problem with the car, and a service technician comes out and fixes it for you (OnStar, anyone?). Along those lines, on a lower priced car, you will see “SRS” or “Airbag” embossed in the dash where the airbags deploy from. You won’t see that in a high end car, even though there’s an airbag in there - the folks that buy these cars don’t want to see the label. Spend $80k for a car, you get what you want, I guess.
High end convertables have a rollover monitoring system. If you look at a Mercedes convertable driving down the road with the roof down, you won’t see anything sticking up from the body of the car other than the windshield and the driver’s head. Should the car detect a rollover, two roll bars deploy from behind the rear seat in some tiny fraction of a second. One of the sensors that detects this rollover is the amount of weight on each tire. Should you need to change a tire on one of these cars, you need to tell the computer in the car “settle down, you’re ok, I’m just changing the tire” before you jack that tire up. The average Mercedes driver can’t do that, thus the service technician coming out to do it for you.
As for the average consumer car, I have no idea why there isn’t a spare tire.
I’m not defending GM or anything. I just didn’t want people to bash Enterprise. I’ve used them several times and I have always come away happy with the vehicle and the entire rental experience.
That “rollover monitoring system” on high-end convertibles sure seems like a bit much. I would think that there would be all sorts of ways that that wouldn’t work. What if there were something in the way of the rollbars from deploying? The car’s designer cannot possibly know what is causing the car to roll over. The balance of the car would change in a standard T-bone crash, too. Would the rollbars deploy then, even when the car isn’t rolling? I would want to see such a system. The airbags in my car make me feel like I’m driving around with a loaded gun pointed at my face. Now I’ve got to worry that the roof is going to explode? What if the car is rolling over and I raise my hands in an “OH MY GOSH!” sort of pose and my hand gets cut off by the rapidly deploying rollbar? :eek:
Not particularly important but to illustrate - my daughter’s SAAB has a ‘doughnut’ spare (bright red) that is considerably smaller then the other wheels. It is recommended not to exceed 60mph and fifty miles.
I would be severely inconvenienced without a spare. When I bought my last car, a Honda Accord, I had only used it for a week before getting a puncture. The car was 11 years old and I was amazed at the pristine condition of the spare, all the tools and jack. Never been used. That soon changed as I had an average of two punctures a month for the following six months.
:rolleyes:
OK first off Mercedes vehicles do have SRS embossed on both the steering wheel, and the right side of the dash (cite: the pictures on the www.MBUSA.com website, + my own personal observations)
Next while I don’t know for a fact the details of the MB roll bar system I am very familiar with the Volvo system, and I have no reason to suspect that the MB system is any different. On the early Volvo system it takes a 45 degree roll, or a 72 degree pitch to deploy the roll bars. You also have to have the key on. Do I need to mention that there is no way in hell you will ever get to those angles changing a tire? On the later system, the control unit is on the high speed data network, and as I recall it is inactive at zero road speed. I don’t know about you, but I always stop my car before trying to change a tire. So in addition to the angles thing, you have zero road speed thing on top of it.
You extrications training was correct in saying that very few Benz or BMW owners or Volvo owners change their own tires. It is not because they might blow the roll bars (which are only on convertibles) but it is because they don’t know how, or don’t want to get dirty.
If it were me I would ask for my money back on that extrication training. That guy sounds like he was spreading urban legends not information.
Drum God you might want to consider a switch to decaf. Seriously, you are worried about the roll bars in a car you don’t even own?
For your information, the bars basically work on three deployment criteria. roll more than 45 degrees, pitch more than 72 degrees or free flight the car. (drive off a cliff)
The bars are located above and behind the rear seat. It is highly doubtful that you could get your arms there even if you tried. Look here click on the thumbnail in the lower left corner. See the cover marked ROPS? That is the cover over the roll bar.
About your t-bone accident. Yes the bars might go off in a t-bone accident. What is your point?
Ah, dude, he does not need to know why the car is going over, only the fact that it is. In the automotive world upside down = bad. After almost 40 years in the car business I cannot think of any case where upside down = good. Upside down is always bad. Upside down with no roll bar is worse. This is because medical studies have shown that your head is not designed to support a 3500 lb car.
God damn you bastards! I just blew $15 resubscribing JUST to post the following rubbish! How do you do it?!
I am the owner of one of said Mercedes convertibles. I don’t believe this system is used in the newer versions (the ones with the fancy folding hard tops), which use more conventional fixed roll bars behind the seats.
I must say that I am extremely skeptical of the actual effectiveness of this device. There is a button on the dash where one can raise and lower the roll bar manually. It takes about 1 second to fully deploy, which is…a lot longer than what you would expect to have in the event of a high speed roll over. I don’t know, maybe there is some hidden mechanism that deploys it instantly if there was a real accident, but it still doesn’t look very safe.
Further to that, the roll bar mechanism is intricately tied to the hydraulic lift system used to actuate the convertible soft top . The whole mechanism is horrendously unreliable, even by Mercedes-Benz standards, and in fact, the service manual indicates that one of the signs of a failing hydraulic soft top mechanism is “a non-operational roll bar”.
On the other hand, the car does look quite sleek with out it, and when not deployed, the roll bar is tastefully receded in the back, and being wrapped in leather, completely unobtrusive. I guess I’ll just try not to roll over so much.
This “feature” has been one of a number of rather dubious-looking safety devices. Another, the Emergency Seat Belt tensioner, which is suppose to retract the seatbelt and prevent me from falling out, is essentially an explosive charge positioned about 3 inches from my head, in the head rest.
Hi Opal. I’m back.
ETA: Ah, thanks Rick. I feel a lot better now. Still skeptical though, since my roll bar doesn’t pop up, but rather rotates into position.
Although I haven’t designed active deployment safety systems for automobiles, my exposure and reading on the topic gives the same conclusion as Rick. As much engineering goes into making sure these things don’t deploy when they’re not intended to as to operating when activated by a legitimate situation. Since the early days of airbags and the whole decapitation of small passengers issue, automotive safety designers have used both detailed computer simulation and simulation testing to assure that the safety systems operate in a reliable, controlled, and intended manner. Car manufacturers have become some of the most risk-adverse companies in existance given the expense of major recalls and the effect of bad press on an otherwise functional automobile design.
I guarantee that the roll bar deploys much faster in an emergency situation, most likely, as Rick suggests, via a pyrotechnic or cold-gas charge. However, for the sake of safety, you wouldn’t want it to deploy fast when manually operated any more than you’d unload a gun by firing it. As for the ESB, I’ve handled ordnance devices for cutting cables or splitting rings between rocket stages which could be held in hand while detonating without injury. I’d be less afraid of the pyrotechnics than I would of the amputating snap of an improperly tensioned seat belt.
I can’t find a description of the technology behind the Mercedes roll-bars, but I do know a person who had the bars in his CLK deploy after a particularly bad set of railroad tracks. He said that retraction required a trip to the dealer, but not replacement of the components, leading me to believe that pyrotechics are not involved.
I would agree, as I have gone over ungodly amounts of documentation about the operation of the roll bar/soft top system during repair and maintainance (did I mention it was unreliable as hell?), and no where were pyrotechnics or cold gas mentioned.
I missed this on the first read through.
The pyrotechnic pre-tensioner is a small charge (think .22 sized) that when you are in an accident fires which drives a piston down a barrel. The piston has a steel cable attached to it. The steel cable pulls the slack out of the seat belt. It will pull about 4" of slack with about 20lbs of force. This system is designed to remove any slack in the seat belt so that you do not take a running start at the seat belt. Taking a running start at a seat belt is one of those bad things you don’t want to do. Kind of like being upside down in your car.
If it makes you feel any better, I have had to render these units harmless prior to disposal. I have held them in my hands, and deployed the pyrotechnics.
