Women drivers, & low profile tyres.

[Hasbeen]

Sorry to our TR7 ladies, present company excluded.

A couple of years ago, I bought a Mazda 2, the boxy one, as its
easy to put my 98 year old mother's wheel chair into. My wife loves
it, & claimed it as her car. I have to prise her out of it, when I
need it for mum.

Yesterday while visiting the grand kids, my daughter noticed she had
a flat rear tyre. They changed to the spare, a propper one, not the
standard space saver, for her. She told me she had not driven on it.

When she got home, in the dark, I took the flat out, & put it by my
car. This morning, when I went to get it, I found it had done more
than a few miles dead flat. The side wall of the P4000 Pirelly feels
pretty soft, & I think it's history, but I've never seen one flat
before. I've dropped it into our local bloke to check out for me.

This is a bit of a problem with low profile tyres. The Mazda has
185 X 15s, either 55, or 60 profile,[I can't remember which]. Not
that low, but low enough for a non enthusiast driver to not even
notice they had a flat, at lower speeds, when on the back. This is
the second time she has driven for some distance on a flat on this
car.

She is not a twit, & never had this problem with our older cars,
utes, & light trucks, with larger profile tyres. Of course, I've
never driven the thing with a flat, so I don't know how well it
hides the fact that a back tyre is flat. Perhaps it is really hard
to notice, but it would not be too hard to end up on your roof, if
you drove with the flat, down the expressway.

Hasbeen

[trphil]

Hi Hasbeen, I used to have a Peugeot 306 and once when I was driving to a training session with a colleage in it I had a rear tyre blow out.

I was driving along the M2 at 70 mph and we heard a slight pop/bang noise, I felt nothing. I continued for another 5 miles or so along the motorway and then got off onto a country lane and proceeded to drive just over 2 miles to our destination along a wiggly road in a fairly spirited manner, the handling was absolutely fine.

When we parked, I said to my colleage "I'd better see if there's any damage after that bang", I walked round to the rear near side and the tyre was totally destroyed and on the point of parting company with the wheel.

[Marko]

185/55 R15 that's not such a low profile , and a flat tire makes a lot of noise.

people usually crank up the radio and don't hear anything that's wrong with the car.

a flat rear on a FWD car with ABS should be detected on the first braking as the ABS would show its ugly head instantly , since the weight of the car on the rear is next to none.

not to mention the difference in handling in left or right corners, in one turn you wouldn't feel any change , the car would even exhibit a bit more oversteer , but on the other turn you would scrape the rim on the pavement.

[pulliptears]

I cant believe Im going to admit this....but here goes...

In my youth (17) I drove a bright yellow rover metro. It had problems, lots of them from the electrics to the fact the ignition was bust and had to be started with an old 50p piece, anyway I digress, its main problem was the steering rack was on its way.

Over the course of a week I noted that it was pulling hard to the right. I cursed the steering rack and finally one evening mentioned it to my dad who took the keys and went out for a look. He was wetting himself laughing as he pointed to the flat tyre.....[:I]

Anyway, he decided that would be a good time to teach me how to change the tyre. My experience up to that point was my then boyfriend had a motorbike, so armed with 2 dessert spoons I sat on the floor and went about trying to prize the tyre from the rim as we had done many times with the bike. My Dad bless him stood watching me struggle for about 10 minutes before the pressure got to him and he collapsed in hysterics.

I learned 2 things that day, dont always make assumptions on whats wrong with your car and, most importantly, motorbike tyres and metro wheels are very very different [:I][:I][:I][:I][:I][:I]

[FI Spyder]

I remember reading years ago it depended on suspension geometry. There were two schools of thought. Some manufacturers opted for one some the other. One was that you could feel the road, flat tires etc. and know what was happening with your car and could compensate accordingly. The other was the car wouldn't be affected by things like flat ties, driving on soft sholders etc. and was safer for the inexperienced or inattentive driver. Obviously the car manufactors decided on erring on the safer side for numpty drivers at the expense of knowing whats going on with your car.



TR7 Spider - 1978 Spifire - 1976 Spitfire - 1988 Tercel 4X4 - Kali on Integra - 1991 Integra