flat tire

oh yeah?

I always "enjoy" seeing the big heavy SUVs on tyres with work sidewalls.. especially the Explorer. I guess all the news of blowouts and roll overs have faded from the public's consciousness

I haven't had a flat in 20 years. Two of my coworkers, OTOH, have 3-4 per year each. Both their cars have TPMS, too.

Tires are just made better than they used to be.

friedgreencorrado wrote: Tires are just made better than they used to be.

I think this, along with paying attention to your driving is the key.

I regret to say this, but I've never had a flat tire on a car in 14+ years since I started driving.

Motorcycles on the other hand, it seems like 50%+ of the tires I bought ended up with a patch. I can think of two separate occasions where I had new rear tires pickup nail/other to get a hole within 100 miles of being mounted.

it depends a lot on where you live. Back in the 80s and 90s when I was living in Ocean City NJ.. they were building houses faster than you could blink. I was working at a gas station and we had a dozen flats a day due to roofing nails

i woke up one morning to 3 flats on the back of my dually. i had been on a construction site for a couple weeks and ended up with 6 nails between the tires, 4 were in one.

another time i took it to the scrap yard to drop off a car. i hit a puddle and in the puddle was a 5/8" steel pin. right into the tire. once i got on the road and hit 25 the pin blew out.

i pick up lots of nails because of the places i go.

the worst was a trailer tire. we got to a guy's house to pick up a truck and after i got it loaded i heard hissing. we picked up a nail in his driveway and my mom borrowed the plug kit out of the truck so i was without my tire plugs. no spare on the trailer, because the spare was on it already. we were 35 miles from civilization so i told my dad to load up a jack and tire and head my way and i would head his way and meet along the way. about 3 miles into the trip the tire went totally flat. we kept going, it was cold and snowy and getting late. i went 20mph for 30 miles on it. the tire started shredding. the steel belts scrubbed all the rust off the trailer frame. we made it to a menards parking lot and told my dad we would be waiting. he brought my a tire and we fixed it and went home. on the way one of the tool box doors fell off my utility bed...

then there was the other time we had about 10,000# of firewood on the trailer and got stuck at the wood place. the guy pushed the trailer straight sideways and popped a tire off the bead, and just shrugged. we managed to get about half a mile down the road and jack up the trailer, pull the tire off, ratchet strap down the middle, and pop it back on the rim.

I used to get flats all the time when I ran all-seasons (Pilot Sport A/S, Toyo Proxes 4, and Falken 512s).

Since I switched to dedicated UHP summers + performance winters, I haven't had a flat in 5 or 6 years.

It's been a long time since I've had a flat from road debris, but the tires on my 325iX like to leak air around the rim of the wheel. The funny thing is it's not consistent - the tires will be up to pressure for weeks or months at a time, and then randomly one wheel or another will go nearly flat, just like that. I really should bring it in to the tire shop and get the corrosion cleaned up on the rims, but in the meantime I carry around one of those little air compressors that plugs into the lighter socket.

mguar wrote: After only 399,802 miles I managed somehow to get a flat.

When I first read that, I thought you meant you had that many miles on one set of tires.

stuart in mn wrote: It's been a long time since I've had a flat from road debris, but the tires on my 325iX like to leak air around the rim of the wheel. The funny thing is it's not consistent - the tires will be up to pressure for weeks or months at a time, and then randomly one wheel or another will go nearly flat, just like that. I really should bring it in to the tire shop and get the corrosion cleaned up on the rims, but in the meantime I carry around one of those little air compressors that plugs into the lighter socket.

Hmm, I do get that from time to time on the Corrados. Does your iX have the stock BBS wheels on it? Guy at my tire store says they get little bead leaks when they get older. I had one doing it, but they coated it with something last time I had new ones mounted--it's only been 8mos, but it hasn't done it since.

EDIT: DOH! You mentioned the corrosion in your post. Yup, that's it.

friedgreencorrado wrote: Hmm, I *do* get that from time to time on the Corrados. Does your iX have the stock BBS wheels on it? Guy at my tire store says they get little bead leaks when they get older. I had one doing it, but they coated it with something last time I had new ones mounted--it's only been 8mos, but it hasn't done it since. EDIT: DOH! You mentioned the corrosion in your post. Yup, that's it.

Yeah, that car basically is only driven in the winter; it gets a lot of salt and slush on the wheels so they're pretty crusty. Plus, one of the wheels has a little bit of a flat spot (those BBS wheels are pretty soft) which probably doesn't help either.

Score one for new car nannies. Left home, drove about two blocks, TPMS light comes on. So I go back home to check presures, found one low and it had a sheet metal screw in it. I had planned to drive about seventy miles. Maybe would have had a ruined tire and haveing to put the donut on.