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This morning I attended the funeral for a friend whose wife died. She died of lung cancer having never smoked a day in her life.
The church where both visitation and the funeral were held was very big. I would estimate the main floor could seat 400 people and there was a balcony do boot. It is a non-denominational church.
The service was very nice. Unfortunately, I had to get back to a client so I could not stay for the burial and later meal - much as I desired to.
It’s after the funeral; I’m lead-footing it up Route-55, when I hear a loud clunk. It sounded like a tire kicked up a large stone into the undercarriage of the body. But then something didn’t sound quite right. I quickly made my way from the passing lane to the right shoulder of the road dodging merging traffic for the local on-ramp.
I stopped the car, opened the door and look back at the rear tire. Flat as a pancake.
I checked my position and decided I was pulled well off the road. I turned on the four-way flashers and exited the vehicle. It was hot. Probably 92 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. I opened the trunk and pulled the jack, tire iron and doughnut spare from the trunk. I was surprised to find a small pool of water in the wheel well where the spare resided. There were three frogs and a turtle living there.
I first used my foot to back off the lug nuts. Then I located the jack point, positioned the scissors jack under it and screwed up the car. I removed the lug nuts the rest of the way. They were hot to touch and some parts of the tire/wheel felt hot enough to leave a blister – but I came away unscathed.
The blowout hole was obvious. Although the rubber was still attached, it was held by a flap and the exit hole looked to be about 3/8’s of an inch in diameter right at the edge of the tire tread.
I pulled the wheel from the car, slid the spare into place, snugged down the lug nuts, lowered the jack, tightened the lug nuts with my foot on the tire iron, threw everything into the trunk, and closed the lid.
I visually inspected the now mounted spare and it looked good. I re-entered the vehicle, re-lit the engine and fired up the A/C.
The rest of my day was uneventful. My only problem now is to replace the tire. I’m considering replacing all four tires. Two of them are Goodyear Eagles and I hate them. Although they do seem to be very responsive to steering, they are the noisiest tires I can remember owning. They sound like a truck going down the road.
My challenge is what to replace them with. I put a set of Dunlops on Blue Velvet a couple of years ago and they are very nice tires. Although they’re not as responsive as the Eagles, they have a nice soft ride and are very quite.
Posted by Ted at July 20, 2005 10:01 PM