I'm heading home on New Years Day and I hear a sound like I ran over a tennis ball. I didn't see anything on the road or get sent flying so I couldn't see that it was something that wouldn't damage a tire. I'm 325 miles from home and have low chance of finding a tire shop open on a holiday in NE Arkansas. In hindsight I should have stopped and looked at the tire immediately, but I thought if there was a problem the tire monitor system would alert me.

15 minutes later I get a flat tire warning and pull over and I'm looking for flat concrete to pull over for jacking. I find a little no name convenience store and pull up to the air station. I see something that looks like a bolt sticking out of the LR. I air it up just to give time to move the car before it goes flat again and ponder installing the temp spare which I think is rated at 5O MPH. I'm thinking I need a tire plugging kit and ask a guy at the gas pump if he has one. He considered it but didn't and he had a look like he was sorry he couldn't help.

My wife had already gone into the store and came out and said they had tire repair kits. The store had minimal stock, but had two choices for plugging kits, one with a rasp was cheaper at $3.19. I empty the trunk which is vacation full to the brim, to jack up the car to let the tire be in a relaxed state for plugging. I start pulling the offending culprit and it is a tire weight driven through the outer edge of the tread. The mounting clip makes it hard to remove, and it has left about a 1/4" hole, probably too big for reliable plugging. I put two of the strings in the kit in after coating with the tube of cement. Looks pretty good but a bit dicey. I inflate first to 10 psi to let the glue set a while then to full pressure.

A guy pulls up to help and he comes out of the store with a cup of soapy water for testing after loaning his tire inflator and calling the local tire shop owner who was in his contact list, to see if they had a tire. He was as nice as he could be and did several things to help. He suggested I go to WalMart forty miles down the road and get a new tire or a repair, but after driving thirty miles on the plugged tire that held, I decided to just head home keeping it under 65 and made it.

I can't believe it went flat at a store with plugging kits available and how kind and helpful Arkansas folks are. I was afraid I was going to have to either use the temp spare at low speed or stay overnight somewhere to get tires the next day. I recommend plugging kits while on the road. Sure is nice to be in my own bed after 10 nights in hotels.

New meaning of the word "road force balancing". Glad it worked out for you, over the years I've used more than one plug to stop a leak also, just to get home. I keep safety seal plugs in the truck that don't need glue, they do dry out though, I need to check them.

I’d also recommend the thing you had to borrow, a portable compressor. A piece of 5/8 or 3/4 plywood is handy for using a jack on soft terrain.

I've driven cross country and have found most people are very helpful and friendly. I recommend you purchase a small air compressor to keep in your car along with a tire repair kit so in the future you don't have to hope you find a gas station with a air pump or tire repair kit. I have compressors for all my vehicles and they've saved me more than once when I had a flat or needed to add air.

Good job on getting it plugged. I also have a square of plywood with my jack to create a flat surface.

We recently bought a Tesla Model Y and decided to drive from NC to NH for Christmas.

However, there is no spare! WTF? Apparently a lot of manufacturers are omitting them. Not very smart IMHO.

Anyway, I bought a spare kit that included the tire, jack and associated tools. There was no way I was going to drive almost 2000 miles in what turned out to be freezing weather. Fortunately, we didn’t have any issues.

Glad it worked out. I’ve plugged a handful, excellent results over all doing so.

I have air, a tow strap & jumper cables in my truck. I have mostly used them to help others.

I also have a better jack. I will look into a plywood platform for jacking.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
However, there is no spare! WTF? Apparently a lot of manufacturers are omitting them. Not very smart IMHO.

I know some vehicles come with a can of Fix-a-Flat type stuff. That’s probably safer than changing a flat tire for most people. It’s probably enough to get you to somewhere that can fix the tire. That’s all a donut spare would be good for. That’s really all a regular spare is good for as well. Once you’ve deployed a full size spare, what are you going to do the next time you get a flat?

Coming back from MI, I woke up in Lexington to find a flat tire on my boat trailer. I put the spare on and immediately went to have a new tire mounted on the wheel. Turned out to have been a wise choice because I had a blowout near Kennesaw, GA later that day. No problem, put the new spare on, drove to Discount tire, bought four more USA made GoodYears to match the one I had purchased in Lexington earlier and haven’t had a problem since. The old tires were less than 6 months old and had under 2,000 miles on them.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
We recently bought a Tesla Model Y and decided to drive from NC to NH for Christmas.

However, there is no spare! WTF? Apparently a lot of manufacturers are omitting them. Not very smart IMHO.

Anyway, I bought a spare kit that included the tire, jack and associated tools. There was no way I was going to drive almost 2000 miles in what turned out to be freezing weather. Fortunately, we didn’t have any issues.

IS there a dedicated space for the spare that's not provided? I'm assuming there isn't.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
IS there a dedicated space for the spare that's not provided? I'm assuming there isn't.

In a lot of cars now, they supply an inflator and can of fix-a-flat because they weigh less than the spare and I've heard that it's a 1 mpg gain for every 10lbs lost. But they still have the spot for the spare. At least for the older designs, but I have seen some of the newer designs that are designed without a location for one.

When I use to travel to play live gigs, any time I had to travel during a national holiday, I’d just rent a car. Any issues like this I could call them and they’d come fix it and in one instance they had me drop the thing off and exchanged vehicles. Now before I leave town I have all tires checked for PSI, inflated if need be, and I pull the spare out as well and make sure it’s properly inflated. If I have a flat I’ll run the doughnut and 60 MPH and live with it.

When I bought my midlife crisis car, a 2016 Challenger, I found there was a spare tire space in the trunk but that's where they mounted the rear subwoofer speaker (part of the sound package the car had). I asked about it they told me they don't supply spare tires anymore and pointed out where the inflator and fix-a-flat were.

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:
…I've heard that it's a 1 mpg gain for every 10lbs lost.

That’s horsepower not mpg.

quote:

IS there a dedicated space for the spare that's not provided? I'm assuming there isn't.

I lost half my trunk space when I ditched run flats.

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
IS there a dedicated space for the spare that's not provided? I'm assuming there isn't.

In a lot of cars now, they supply an inflator and can of fix-a-flat because they weigh less than the spare and I've heard that it's a 1 mpg gain for every 10lbs lost. But they still have the spot for the spare. At least for the older designs, but I have seen some of the newer designs that are designed without a location for one.

Most cars with 19, 20, or larger rims physically can't be carried inside the car, so now car makers are using run flat tires and leaving that part of the truck/hatch for extra storage.

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
IS there a dedicated space for the spare that's not provided? I'm assuming there isn't.

In a lot of cars now, they supply an inflator and can of fix-a-flat because they weigh less than the spare and I've heard that it's a 1 mpg gain for every 10lbs lost. But they still have the spot for the spare. At least for the older designs, but I have seen some of the newer designs that are designed without a location for one.

Unfortunately the Model Y doesn’t have a dedicated space but I found a YouTube video of a guy who removed the rear sub trunk liner and was able to push the foam molding forward enough to put the spare in there and still leave the main portion of the rear trunk open. It really is a lost opportunity why these car manufacturers don’t put at least a donut spare in every car. My Porsche is the same way…

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:
and I've heard that it's a 1 mpg gain for every 10lbs lost

Not even close.

Try ~1% change in mpg (note that's 1 percent, not 1 mile) for every ~100 pounds of weight on the average passenger car. (Larger/heavier vehicles would need a correspondingly larger weight change to move the needle.)

Meaning on a car averaging 30 mpg, getting to 31 would require losing around 350 pounds. A far cry from 10.


Otherwise, if what you heard was accurate, your MPG would halve itself or more anytime you added a 150-200 pound passenger, and with a carload of 4+ people you'd be sitting at 0 mpg and barely be making it down the block on a full tank.

Rogue, thanks for the info. I first heard about the spare tire issue in 2017 when we bought our Escape.

Considering I can barely remember where I was yesterday, it doesn't surprise me that I had the wrong info with the right idea.