I probably have about 800 miles on my mini spare, 06 Kia original. No real wear to speak of. I know that it can go for at least 130 miles at 50-70 mph in Texas heat with no problem. I have 3 different brand tires on my car. Tires don't last long for me. Every little town has tires. Maybe not the exact size and new, but they are usable.
I didn't - I read the big warning sticker right on the steel wheel to which it's mounted, directing one to limit speed to 50 MPH, and also the warnings everywhere directing one to limit use of a temporary (donut) spare to 50 miles max.
Clearly, there are only two reasons why this would be. 1) the tire will be worn out and unsafe if those limits are significantly exceeded and/or
2) the vehicle mfgrs. are worried about wear to the spider gears and/or LSD clutches (if so equipped.)Neither one of those sounds like a Good Thing nor practical if it is likely that one might need to travel farther/faster than that before it is convenient to have the flat tire replaced.
Possibly, but it's a hassle and expense that's fairly unnecessary. And the RFTs actually aren't *awful* to drive on; it's just that I consider
15K mile tread life to be laughable and pretty much everyone who's ditched them for something like Michelin Pilot Super Sports (seems to be the current recommendation for my car) praises the Michelins as an improvement in every regard.Paranoia? Complicated preparations? Hardly, finding a "good used" wheel and tire is not incredibly difficult.
My question was really how aggressively should I be pursuing this given that the tires that I already own are directional. No more, no less. You're clearly making a mountain out of a molehill; I'm already mostly prepared for a flat and have spent more time replying to the inanity in this thread than I have actively worrying about my tires.
Look at it this way - let's say that you are looking to hire an employee, and two candidates are traveling from a decent distance away for interviews. Both candidates have flat tires on the way. Candidate #1 calls you an hour or so before his scheduled interview and says "Sir, this is Candidate #1. I unfortunately have had a flat tire on my way to our interview and while I thought that I'd left myself a little extra time to get to your office I may be five or ten minutes late. I appreciate how valuable your time is and will do my best not to be late but just thought I should give you a call in case it is unavoidable. I will be there just as soon as I can and appreciate your time and consideration." Candidate #2, however, is waiting for AAA or whoever the manufacturer of his car decides to send... and doesn't know *when* he'll be able to get back on the road again, but will likely have to wait at least an hour or so for a tow truck to even show up.
Which candidate do you think is more likely to get the job, all other factors being equal? I don't know anyone in the world who would consider the person who was prepared for reasonably forseeable incidents to be the less desirable candidate!
nate
retarded nonsense. bmw and mini drivers of either sex /have/ to rely on roadside assistance - those vehicles typically do NOT have spare wheels.
don't tell nate - he'll get his panties all knotted fretting about the big yellow manufacturer disclaimer wearing out his diff.
YOU don't understand what you're reading, let alone saying. other people's comprehension of your blatherings is a statistical crapshoot.
so as usual, you're blathering about the hypothetical and have no experience. if you had ever been to a big metropolitan area with bridges where you are NOT ALLOWED to stop, a mile [or more] down the road, your rim will most definitely be damaged. as is typically the case with slow freeway flats where the driver doesn't know until the tread separates and the noise of the rim clanking becomes apparent.
yes you did - you said they wouldn't have a machine with "soft pads on it so I don't get big spike marks on the barrels of my wheels".
your [alleged] vehicle manufacturer doesn't even /provide/ a spare on most of their models, so it's just the price you pay for buying into the "ultimate marketing machine" brainwash.
no spikes retard - you've clearly never seen a tire changer.
blathering retarded nonsense about something that doesn't exist.
you're talking out of your ass nate. as usual. compact spares work just fine and last many thousands of miles. their primary limitation is their impact on vehicle performance and thus safety. nothing else.
you can't even read intelligently, let alone respond.
either you're being deliberately disingenuous or you need to learn to read.
Not when reading your posts, that's for damn sure. Nobody else does, either.
let alone saying. other
Gee, you almost exactly described something that's happened to me at least twice that I recall... oddly both times a right rear wheel. A problem became apparent when the rear of the car suddenly felt slightly loose and/or squirmy, lifting off the throttle resulted in noise and vibration, pulling over revealed a completely flat tire that had been driven on for a while to the point where the sidewall was starting to wear. And yet the rims (different cars) in both instances were undamaged - not just in my opinion but in the opinion of the shop that installed replacement tires.
They probably won't.
They'll likely do a good job of mounting the tires and balancing them from a perspective of leaving the car safe to drive and not causing any vibration, but they will cause cosmetic damage to the wheels.
Shame it isn't a relatively easy problem to fix.
balls. Most tire machines use wheel clamps that clamp the inside of the barrel of the wheel with metal pads with a sharp textured finish that leaves little dimples in the metal of the wheel - even steel ones. Most tire machine manufacturers do offer soft pads for these clamps, but almost nobody uses them.
Who's never seen a tire machine, again?
The *only* time I've ever seen a set of wheels that had had one or more replacement tires put on them that *didn't* have those marks on the barrels from the wheel clamps were on a car that had a full service history from the dealership where it was sold (yes, the owner had apparently gone to the dealership for replacement tires.) It was a German manufacturer that you love to run down, and their service and parts prices are eye-wateringly expensive, but at least they apparently insist that their dealerships use the soft pads on their tire machines (or they use tire machines with a different clamping mechanism for the usual.)
And even if that is the only limitation, it's an excellent argument for limiting their use.
Blah blah blah. Learn to write something that makes sense when others read it.
You need to learn to make sense.
nate
Here you go... pretty typical looking tire changer IME
"Wheel Clamps Positioned for Inside Clamping
Plastic protectors are used on the clamping jaws to protect the wheel?s finish."
If only that were universally true...! More often than not, they weren't ever purchased by the shop (as they're often optional,) or fell off or wore out a long time ago, or the tech doesn't use them because, well, not using them probably does clamp the wheel more securely.
"Spikes" may have been a hyperbole, but they do have a very heavy diamond-knurled finish, or I've also seen wheels that were obviously inside-clamped with a machine that had jaws that left three or four little round, deep indentations in the rim.
You think manufacturers would equip their vehicles with a spare tire that would pop after 150 miles?
You think someone would manufacture such a tire?
and/or
It seems more likely they wouldn't provide a donut.
You could ride your run flats for 50, then swap to the donut. How many donuts can you fit in the trunk?
How many miles do you drive per year?
I wouldn't think so, yet here you are.
Who the f*ck could say? Your preparations are allegedly imagined to solve the problem of a flat 51 miles from... the nearest BMW dealer, I guess.
You didn't mention the year/make/model vehicle (as usual), or who manufactured the tire...
You don't say...?
I'd have to agree run flat tires would fit that bill.
Well, thanks from everyone for wasting their time considering a "problem" you don't care about.
Look at this this way, the longest trip you're taking is to Darlington PA to hit up your folks for a "loan". -----
- gpsman
weeeeeell, define "normal" I'm seeing swiss cheese pavement more often than I want to
and when I was doing an extensive stroll across a sea of these I got a _sidewall_ damage rather than the part that contacts the pavement. Obviously the sidewalls are way thinner than the part that meets the road, on the roadway tires anyway. And there is a whole lot more sidewall of the donut -> meaning during rural softroading there's more exposure to damage.
yeah, saw some like they've been on for quite a while. makes me wonder how easy it would be to get a replacement when they finally wear them out that AND the looks of the front counter guy at the tire shop when he is told the size needed :-)))) lots of eye roll
they're supposed to be inflated to a much higher pressure than a standard tire. 50-60lbs is not untypical. of course, how many people bother to check the pressure on the spare? but that's the way they're supposed to work.
it's as easy as using a tire iron to open some other car's trunk!
q. why are you posting links to some drivel off the net that doesn't prove your point in the first place?
a. because you have no experience, you're clearly not paying any attention when you buy tires and have them fitted, and are, as always, completely clueless.
one of my friends /has/ a [hunter] tire changer. i've used it. it has NO spikes.
another friend worked in tire shops for five years while putting himself through med school. he's never seen or even heard of tire changer spikes.
conclusion: you're a blathering anosognosic retard getting your panties in a knot about something that doesn't exist.
you are somehow implying that higher dohnut pressures are meant to compensate for the sidewall weakness?
careful - strength and stiffness are entirely different.
besides, tires support load by tensioning the cords, not by compressing the rubber. other than the need to protect side-walls from abuse and to hold air, there's no mechanical need for a sidewall to have any rubber on it at all.
You haven't established "sidewall weakness"...
Did you mean to purport the road damaged your sidewall, or that tires in general are immune from sidewall damage... or the sidewalls of donuts are inferior to regular tires...? -----
- gpsman
The last is true. Most regular service tire sidewalls are at least
2-ply; the last donut I looked at (yesterday) had 1-ply sidewalls.
since side walls are bias ply [for a very specific reason about which you're almost certainly completely clueless], how the FUCK are you going to have only one of them, retard???
I'm just reading the sidewall. I guess the donut must be radial ply? I didn't put that information on there, the tire manufacturer (I think Continenental?) did.
go check your facts retard. like i said, there's a very specific reason for bias ply sidewalls. go figure out what that is.
The last one I looked at (Goodyear, yesterday) reads "3 PLIES", but doesn't differentiate between sidewall and tread.
Still, I don't believe any tire sidewalls can be damaged by "normal" use. -----
- gpsman
I've seen even service tire sidewalls cut by sharp edges of potholes before. Fortunately most of them weren't mine, but in one instance I misjudged the depth of a pothole in the rain and came out the next morning to a flat, unrepairable tire.
It's not much of a stretch to imagine that a thinner sidewall is less resistant to such things... and the narrower tread width increases the odds of falling into a pothole should you not be able to avoid it.
nate
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