The other day my wife came home with a flat tire. Two nails in it. Two. She drove through a construction site. We open the trunk, and no spare tire. No jack. No tire iron. All there is is a little electric air compressor and some tire glop that you are supposed to pump into the damaged tire to fill the hole. It's like glue, and it dries in the hole and plugs it. It's the same shit that mountain bikers use to make tubeless tires.
So I can't put on the spare (no spare) to drive to a gas station to get the bad tire plugged, if they will even plug it these days -- they are fussy about holes in radial tires. I can't take the tire off to try to plug it myself (no jack). I don't want to spray that gluey stuff into my tire, because it makes an hellacious mess. In the end we took a taxi to the store and bought a jack and a tire iron. I put on in my driveway the set of mounted winter tires I keep in the shed.
But I'm thinking to myself, what if I was in the middle of nowhere, and I got a slash in the sidewall, or ripped a big chunk out of the tred? The glue wouldn't fill that, and I'd have no options at all. What genius decided to get rid of spare tires? At least you could drive (sort of) on those shitty compact spares they used to have. With all I paid for my car, the fucks couldn't throw in a rim and a tire, along with a screw jack and a tire iron? The electric pump is fine, if it went with a spare tire and a jack, but by itself it may not even inflate the flat tire if it's separated from the rim.
no spare tire
First thing I checked in my Volvo, and no spare in mine either, like Titus said, MPG requirements :/ And that's the very next thing I bought, looked up the Pitch Circle Diameter (PCD) for my wheel and worked out that it was the same as a lot of Fords, picked up a new Mondeo wheel for £15. I repurposed the jack from my old Ford. I was lucky that the spare fits exactly (to the nearest mm) in the floor space, because they actually made it too short to sit flat, so it's sort of propped up at an angle.
The Volvo pump is really nice, but the goop has an expiry date, so who knows. I added a track pump to the boot, because electric pumps could fail, and now it's there for when I go riding, and a long wheel wrench because I've had issues before with getting a wheel nut released.
I'll add some tire plugs later, I've seen some new screw in types that look easier to install than the rubber strings? none of this fixes a blown sidewall, so a spare is a must.
I had to lose the tailored Volvo storage tray in the boot, but it's just dead weight really
the locking bolt key went in a neon yellow bag, so it doesn't get lost.
next thing is to check that all of this actually works on my car, just in case I missed something.
I read they got rid of tires because of EPA requirements. Ditching all weight possible to get more MPG. In other words blame the government.
You bring up a good point, if you're in the middle of nowhere, how are you supposed to deal with this.
tire shops also hate that tire goop, they'll charge you if they find it in there for the mess and clean up.
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