On our way home from dinner out with friends tonight we detoured through the “valley” to see some Christmas lights. At one point going through a neighborhood Donna said, “It sounds like you picked something up in a tire.” I slowed a bit, but after a few seconds the sound went away, so I shrugged it off. About 10 minutes later as we were accelerating away from a traffic light, the back end of the car squirmed. When I shifted into second, it did it again and we could tell we had a flat. I limped ahead another 100′ or so into a small lighted parking lot.
It took a couple minutes to clean out and disassemble the trunk to get down to the spare. Jacked up the car and swapped out the flat tire for the bitty compact spare. Fortunately the regular tire and wheel fit back into the trunk, but only because there wasn’t any air in the tire and then still it was a tight squeeze. Because of the time, our only chance to get it fixed was if the tire center at Wally World was still open. It was on the way home, but although Walmart is open 24 hours, the tire center part must close their doors at 8:00 PM because it is dark when we get there.
The only good thing about this puncture is at least it is in the center of the tread area, so I can get the LTS to put a plug in the tire tomorrow. The tires are getting worn, but there is enough tread still left to possibly get me through until early spring. Just for the record I checked to see how many miles I have on these tires and it turns out I’ve got 30K on them. I wonder if the T1R is supposed to wear better than it’s predecessor the T1S? Because I was usually only able to get 25K or so on the older model Toyos…
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496
Heck, if the tires are 2+ years old, they’re shot no matter how much tread is left.
Bought ’em in June of ’06, but even at 18 months they were starting to get a little hard. I was hoping to get thru until February on them. Oh, well, the best laid plans…