Back in the '80s, I was always getting flat tires. It was like a curse. (Nowadays the curse seems to be ‘Let’s run into Johnny’s car!’) I do see people at the side of the road with flats, but it doesn’t seem as common as it did 30 years ago.
The last time I changed a flat was last month and a couple of months ago. The valve stems on the MGB were rotten, so I had three flats during that time – one while I was on the way to get the valve stems that had been holding air replaced. Fortunately, it’s an easy matter to change tires on an MGB. The jack slides into a tube under the rocker panel and just cranks up. A few whacks on the knock-off hub with a rawhide hammer, and you can screw the hub off and pull off the wheel.
I got five new valve stems, but then someone flipped a switch at the Autumnal equinox and it’s been raining every weekend. :smack:
Anyway, with roads and tire technology seeming to have improved over the years, when was the last time you changed a flat?
I like to think I could still do it, but I’d rather call AAA. I’ve actually only had a roadside flat once, and it was in a quiet suburban neighborhood. I ran over a crowbar or something similar.
Nearly 20 years of driving and I’ve never had cause to put a spare tire on any of my own cars. I’ve had punctures, but nothing that couldn’t be inflated and driven to a shop.
I did have a friend who had a flat and no jack/spare in the trunk, maybe 10 years ago. I brought him a floor jack and a wheel and we experienced the exact scenario from the linked thread. I didn’t have a BFH in my car so it was up to the two of us to kick the shit out of the tire entire it unseized itself. Not fun. (Unrelated additional detail: the extra wheel I’d brought was a 14" alloy from my CRX, which wouldn’t fit over the brake caliper on his Civic, despite also being equipped with 14" wheels. His wheels were steel, and they have more room on the inside. So he ended up having it towed anyway.)
I’ve still never had to use the factory jack on the side of the road.
About 3 years ago. Ran over a screw on the way to an exhibition. Went to leave a couple hours later & the tire was flat. Easy peasy, except it was a hot day in a shadeless parking lot. That’s the only tire change I’ve done on that car which I’ve owned since 2006. And no, the wheel had not dry-welded itself onto the hub.
I owned my previous car for about 10 years and I don’t think I ever changed a tire on it.
I have done a road-side tire change or two, but they were back in the 1970s. Except as I noted above, all my other tire problems have been a slow enough leak that I could directly get to a repair place or pump it up at home or a gas station then get to a repair place.
All the time - but that’s on my road bicycle. I average about one flat every 1,000 miles even with puncture resistant tires.
On the cars? Just a couple of weeks ago my wife’s car had a bad flat at home. I took the tire off and went to the tire store. Couldn’t be fixed as it was into the sidewall. $220 to get the same exact tire and it would have taken 4 or 5 days to ship in. However I could get 2 new tires for $280 mounted the next day. As the original tire was about half worn out, getting 2 new tires made sense plus I have a spare now.
Then there is winter. I bought 4 snow and ice tires with wheels from TireRack.com. So I swap them out myself twice a year.
TIP: Many people think that they have a flat tire to only find out that they actually have 2 flat tires. When is the last time that you checked the pressure on your spare tire??? My wife’s new car only had 20 PSI in the spare tire when it was suppose to be 60 PSI. I’ve check many friends and family members’ spare tires and found many very low. I check my car’s spares every 6 months.
About 2 months ago. I’d not changed a tire yet on this particular car, but it’s the same make and model as my previous car and I’ve changed plenty of tires throughout my life so no big deal. I’m very lucky I had just gotten off the Beltway before the blowout, and there was a park parking lot right there that I could pull in to, so all in all just about the best circumstances I could ask for, for that to occur. Took just 15 minutes.
I ran over something in the snow last February and had to change the LR. I was able to get it off the road and into a grocery-store parking lot. I also had a roll-up camping mattress in the trunk to use between my knees and the snow.
Probably 4 years ago. I bought my car in 09 and got a flat in the first 150 miles. The same tire got another flat 3 or 4 months later right where the tread meets the sidewall and I had it replaced. A few months later I got a flat in another tire and ditched the crappy stock tires with less than 10k miles on them. I haven’t had any problems in the subsequent 60k miles. There is plenty of tread but I should consider replacing them due to age.
Last time was on my brother’s Honda Odyssey in the dead of a Vermont past winter. Oh, and it was my birthday.
It was damned complicated to get to the jack, which was secreted in the compartment under the floor of the second row seating. Bunch of carpets and floor panels and various restraining gear to get through before you get to the jack and handle. Then because of the really stupid design of how the crank handle hooks to the jack, I ended skinneing my knuckles on the frozen ground a bunch of times.
Froze the hell out of my hands but at least the wheel wasn’t reefed on the hub.
Had a few blow outs in years past on various cars. For some absurd reason, always on the highway and always in the dead of winter. Once with a trunk full of luggage and xmas presents which had to all come out and sit on the side of the road before I could get to the spare.
I drive a pickup truck with 4x4 center hubs so the front is slightly different than the rear. One early morning I had a flat left front tire and put the spare on even though it didn’t seem quite right. I was less than a mile from home and told myself I would figure it out.
Later the same night I was going to work and the spare fell off while I was driving. Four of the five lug nuts were still on. Inspection reveled the spare was not sitting as close to the hub as it should and the tire was wobbling around on the wheel studs as I drove. This deformed the steel wheel making the mounting holes even bigger allowing the lug nuts to slide through the holes!
I now have a full sized spare.
TL;DR version: Old 4x4 Ford pickups require you to put the spare on the rear axle. If its a rear tire, no problem. If a front tire is flat you place the spare on the rear and then move the full sized rear tire to the front.
Does it count if I take it off in our driveway, take it to a local garage to have it repaired, and put it back on? If so, it’s been in the last 6 months or so.
Wow, it’s been over 30 years, car or bike I’ve had to fix a few since then due to nails and such, but nothing’s ever been flat. I drove everyone crazy riding one of motorcycles for years with a plugged tire.
About four years ago. I live in a rural area with lots of gravel roads. It was the right rear on my Ford Expedition. Got done just as it started to rain.
About four months ago. We missed the mark on a turn out of a parking lot, and there was a hole where land should have been between the sidewalk and the road’s curb. Hit the “top” edge of the curb hard as the wheel dropped into the hole and pinched a hole in the sidewall. Naturally, it was dark and raining.
About three weeks ago, we needed to call roadside assistance to get a tire changed on our trailer. The sidewall was obliterated, and we didn’t have a jack that would work for lifting an RV. Fortunately, I’d checked and filled all of the tires on our truck and on the trailer before setting out on the trip.
There was a rough 2" diameter hole in the sidewall and all around the tire were evenly spaced tears as if someone was cutting a pizza. Best guess is we picked up a nail or some other slow leak cause and the stress of running at 55 MPH without air killed it. Probably all that saved us from a disaster was that the trailer has two axles, so it was more of a “Hmmm, something doesn’t feel right” rather than “AAAAAGHHH!”
