tyre puncture repair

absolutely yes, because of inexperience. I crashed a car when young purely due to lack of experience, a mk2 cortina on a wet road with crossplies, it seemed to just go straight on when I expected it to go right. If it had been shod with radials the crash might not have occurred, same as the carlton incident.

Nearly 50 years on, the same crash would not happen to me.

I blame visits to the tip (sorry - public amenity site) for a couple of punctures, but they've tidied the site up recently..

Similar thing happened to me.

But this was an 850cc minivan with brand new radials - been on perhaps

Outside main entrance to BA Systems (I think) near Weybridge (in 1970) doing about 35mph (limit was 30mph) - gently apply brakes - all 4 wheels wheels lock up and car gently spins. Personally I suspect that there was a fuel spill on that patch of road - it was raining - and on the rest of my journey to work I could not make the car skid at all, despite trying quite hard.

Moral - drive new tyres very hard on a dry road for at least 100 miles before driving in the wet. It might just improve their wet grip. And slow down to well under the speed limit when passing awkward junctions such as factory gates at rush hour.

New tyres do have a layer of mould release agent that should be worn off by driving cautiously for a couple of hundred miles or so, yet tyre sellers rarely advise customers of that minor detail.

Quite how are we supposed to achieve that?

Do we make sure we only get a puncture necessitating a replacement when it is dry?

Well, I don't know about you, but I tried to avoid broken glass, but more especially when driving in wet conditions, because water helps to cut rubber.

Hint for cutting sheet rubber, wet the scissors. :-)

Reference point: A few years back after a catastrophic sidewall blowout in Oz I had no choice but to do over 200 miles on a space saver, trying to keep to 50 but at times nudging 60 - 70 mph. After that abuse the tyre still looked like new.

Would that have mostly been on straight roads, without frequent braking?

Chris

Thanks for all the replies - very interesting and informative.

I always thought the space saver was supposed to go on the back, even if it was the front tyre that was punctured, because it might affect steering or handling but I had not considered the implications of RWD. I wonder what the car handbooks say and whether there is a difference between FWD and RWD cars?

I can't say for sure but I have been to B&Q a few times recently, so it could be. I used to dread taking scrap metal to the scrap yard for fear of driving over something. I drove past a scrap yard recently and I did wonder whether I may have picked the nails up there as there was a lot of rubbish left abandoned outside it.

Nothing in the handbook of any car I've ever seen, with the exception of the Honda previously mentioned.

Chris

Well if you've got a LSD on the rear it'll make for very interesting handling.

Yep, but the tarmac was hot and it was high 30's deg C in the shade, except there was no shade. Once 'civilisation' was reached we had a tyre flown out (oddball size) and fitted locally.

Usually they are not quite the right size. Would result very poor torque steer character for FWD on front as left and right traction force will be unbalanced. On the the rear a RWD would also tend to pull by changing the effective thrust line.

My RWD car has 2 spacesaver tyre specs. T125/70D15 for non LSD (556mm) T135/70D16 for LSD (595.4mm) There is nothing in the handbook about which axle it should be used on.

All of them that were supplied to UK had a full set of 5 normal wheels and tyres and a big hump in the boot carpet.

The later space-savers are now 80mph. From what I can tell, they've always been that really, just the makers were covering their arses. Also, they're not daft - if they make S-S tyres of deeper tread and higher speed rating, there's a lot of motorcycles will be fitted with them tomorrow, hence why the price of them is deliberately fixed high.