Discovering the value of a spare wheel first hand

same as the goverment, cameras are for safety!!. we all know the reason.MONEY

I agree as I do not do this I call the AA but from taking the spare out and fitting it the time is a few minutes. A friend had a flat the other day and she said he spent ages on her tyre as comes with some can instead. I personally find this unacceptable and many have said not a deal breaker but it definitely is for me.

” a retrograde step for the car industry”

I could not agree more

Yes Derek, You have it in a nutshell. We sit around and take what’s handed out like nice little boys and girls and when we get a bit straight to the point everyone goes quiet. Thats not me. I got fed up with that years ago. If its on your mind say it and to h**** with the outcome. Britain is a great place with great people but the Gov stinks as does no spare wheel. Hows that

It’s the motor manufacturers that have deprived us of full-size spare wheels and – in many cases – somewhere sensible to store them. Many cars don’t even come with a space-saver wheel these days. Some don’t even learn that they have no spare until they have a puncture, which suggests that they don’t bother checking the pressure of their spare. They should because space-saver wheels lose pressure more quickly because the pressure is higher and volume of air lower than a normal tyre.

Perhaps governments could have worked together to insist that cars are supplied with spare wheels. Oh, and bulbs that can be changed at the roadside.

If action had been taken ten or even five years ago, we might have saved the spare wheel. There are some of us who feel strongly about the issue but I think we are in the minority. We may manage to save space-saver wheels on some models, either as standard fitment or as an extra.

A BMW owner told me that reputable tyre repairers won’t offer repairs on run-flat tyres because it is not possible to know what damage has been caused by running one under-inflated. I don’t know what happens in practice.

If you run far on run-flats, as you are effectively running on the strong tyre walls they are damaged and even if the puncture could be repaired the tyre wall structure is damaged. I presume (and hope) that if as soon as a puncture is detected you stop the tyre can be repaired. My main concern though is the inconvenience.

A Which? conversation in 2012 raised this issue and found 78% wanted a spare wheel. I wonder what other EU consumer groups found. Why was the consumer’s voice not made known? Perhaps consumer associations do not act co-operatively enough on these issues? What action did Which? take to support its members?

According to the AA: “… many repairers may be reluctant or simply refuse to repair a puncture in a run-flat tyre.”

I have run flats on my BMW and neither ATS nor Halfords would offer repairs on a puncture. Given the choice I would always opt for a spare tyre rather than run flats or a space saver.

As consumers we have own our voices too. We can vote with our wallets all the time.

The motoring organisations first mentioned universal spare wheels a couple of years ago, to cope with the increasing number of motorists without a spare wheel. That won’t help if you have a car with wheels that cannot be replaced in this way. At the time there were two sizes that would cover most cars.

I think there are fewer punctures nowadays, and certainly not so many full blow-outs that used to occur. But given that speeds on major roads are significantly higher and traffic denser the consequences can be much worse, so we have to rely on ever more sophisticated tyre and wheel technology to reduce the potential failure rate still further. I am not convinced that temporary fixes like sealant and run-flats are a satisfactory solution even for short distances and at lower speeds.

The state of the roads is a big concern and we haven’t had the winter frosts yet. Many of last year’s patches are cracking open already due to the weight of traffic and the insubstantial nature of the repair. LGV tyres seem to rip some patches out of their cavities.

Just avoiding, mainly by luck, a really deep hole on a dual-carriageway a couple of weeks ago we were more concerned with thanking our lucky stars than calling the hotline to report the defect. There are fewer highway patrols by police or the contracted-out maintenance service but the reporting numbers are rarely displayed.

Introduction of tubeless tyres made many punctures non-urgent (unless the object was removed) and introduction of radial tyres put an end to repairs unless the puncture is away from the edge of the tread.

At the university where I worked there were always contractors around updating and modifying buildings. I think I had a couple of punctures per year, thanks to the boxfuls of screws they were prone to dropping on campus. Since I retired in 2011, I’ve not had a single puncture.

Those with mountain bikes often puncture-proof their tyres against thorns by putting sealant in new tyres. There’s at least one brand of car tyres that uses a similar system. I don’t know how it affects wheel balance or fitting a replacement tyre.

Wave you are correct that tubeless has less urgent punctures. Tube was still popular when I started and tubeless are brill beside those
If a small object is in tyre let it stay there and make your way to have it repaired. Dont be afraid to add air if needs be. I have screwed self tappers into holes to get me/others home and it works very well. They wont come out again and once driven a few miles they can stop fizzing completely. Not all the time but it happens.
The main thing is to not run the tyre flat for any distance and if you think you have or may have a puncture slow down because a car does not control well even on run flats.
A couple of hundred yards at any kind of speed will have the insides of the side walls all ripped up and if the tyre is inflated again the damage becomes visible from the outside with bumps around the side wall which is evidence of the breakup of the fabric of the tyre because of the physical injury caused by running flat. If a tyre man looks in and see’s 100s of little pieces of rubber the tyre is for the skip and rightly so. It’s not safe.
A hole of small size and not having cut the reinforcing can be repaired usually quite easily although like most things some will make you believe that only certain punctures can be repaired safely. As to what can and what cannot be repaired, well that could make for a whole new topic.
I was a mechanic and have been repairing tubeless tyres since I was in my teens. Yes back then we learned, or at least some of us learned did to fix wheels, service engines, rebuild engines and gear-boxs, repair wiring and we done all that in 5 years and I started on £9.20 per week top line and you got to go to the local tech one day per week for free.
I have never had a failure or problem no matter where the hole was.
I have on the other hand removed tyres that had been repaired but should never have been repaired. Tradesmen and common sense again come to mind
I’ve mixed feeling about the additive stuff to help prevent punctures.
Some are not recommended for road vehicle use but for use only in agriculture and plant vehicles that operate under a certain speed.
It is good in agri tyres.
I have used it on road in motorcycle tyres and I have seen the bright green weep out of a hole before now.
I have worked with it and still do in some wheels but in a car wheel (bike the same) it has a tendency to run to the bottom of tyre whilst stationary for a few hours for obvious reason of gravity.
For the first few miles it can cause a bit of a shake like a wheel off balance which in fact it is but it will even out again and the shaking will stop.
I’ll just edit in a little addition here at the end
A couple of comments about “blow outs”.
For the most part and not unusually most blow outs were far from blow outs and most involved tube type tyres or ones that had tubes added.
I seen on a course footage of how it mostly happened
When a tube tyre gets and obstacle through the tyre and tube the tube stretches at the point of entry and the air is lost quickly. Even if the air is going out slowly the slightest touch of the bead and the tread area together causes instant destruction because the two different rolling radius’s coming together and ripping the tube to shreds in an instant.
The air is not trapped between the tyre an rim firstly because the valve is not sealed to the rim and very quickly the tube type tyres bead breaks away from the rim and there is no hope of the wheel retaining any pressure.
This can and does happen in a second.
So although the term blow-out became an accepted term it was badly flawed because very few tyres actually blew out.
They may have looked like a wreck and it may have seemed like the tyre simply blew up/out but they did not blow out. They went suddenly and everything flew into pieces at 70mph and it was a shock but that was mostly that
A tubeless tyre on the other hand can pick up a nail, screw, whatever and the rate it leaks at is usually minimal and is often noticed whilst the car is stopped or by someone drawing your attention to it. Many simply do not become a flat wheel on the move as we know it because they deflate so slowly
If the tubeless tyre is deflating it mostly does so slowly and even if there is near no pressure and the sidewall allows the bead/rim area to touch the tread area unlike the tube type there is no thin easily damaged membrane to fly apart.
There are always stories of blowouts in corners causing a spin and when over the rear tyre is flat and the bead is broken away from the rim. This is not a blow out.
Any semi inflated or under-inflated tyre can an do break away from the outer side of the rim in a corner. Whether it be tube or tubeless the effect is instant. Poof and your in a spin and if your lucky you didnt hit anything or fly off the road.
A normally inflated tyre does not pull off the rim. You can rally, race, hotrod, destruction derby and you’ll never see a properly inflated tyre break the bead.
The bead is the inner edge of the tyre where it mounts on the rim and the machine or the part of the tyre machine that breaks the bead is know as the bead breaker.
On a tube type it is little more than a strong tight fit around the rim
On a tubeless type it is both tight and also has a rubber lip which must not be damaged and that lip gives the tyre its air tight seal to the rim.
All rims have seats for the bead. The seats are hollows right around the outside edges of the rim that the tyre beads are blown out onto.
The loud cracks as your new tyres are being fitted are the tight beads being blown out over the ridges into the seats for the beads where the tyres bead locates

Might I add. Blowouts can happen but are mosty caused by a large sharp object having an instant terminal effect on the tyre
Another all to common complaint is damage during mounting and yet again like so many of the posts here on Which the staff are often ill prepared or trained and often dont even recognise they damaged a tyre.
Modern semi auto tyre machines are designed to do a job and do it well which they can but like everything it can and is done incorrectly.
I have seen tyre’s being fitted from the wrong side of a rim and although the machine often had the power to mount the tyre the stress to the bead area is severe. This can and does cause premature failure of a tyre non more so than the ever popular Sofim motorhome chassis that is almost always on the limit of weight of both chassis and tyres.
On a van of the same model the tyre are not under the same continual load so any damage will mostly go unnoticed and the tyre will wear out.
On the MH chassis the continual near limit load even stationary just aggravates the damage and bang off the thing goes. And even if the MH stays on the road the damage to the flimsy bodywork and arch area can be really expensive.
A good test is to reach right around a tyre and feel the sidewalls for bumps. There should be no bumps and if there is get rid of the tyre.
Bumps on the surface will be all too obvious as they cause a shake like out of balance wheels and that will alert you.
It really is worthwhile especially for MH owners to do this check at least at the beginning of each season before your first run out.
So if you feel any vibration make your way pronto to Mr Tyre near you and have your tyres looked at and if you have a MH make sure you emphasise the importance of the tyre on such a vehicle. A man fitting tyres with no interest in a MH jst sees a MH as a van with curtains. he doesnt understand its 3200kg all of the year and 3500kg or more some of the year and it is never 1600kg never not in 30years because the 3200 is it empty.

That should read under-inflated rather than inflated. 🙁

I am in exactly the same position. The new version of my current car uses gunk so that is out as I currently have a full size spare wheel.

Your car would fail the MOT if it was fitted with a space-saver, so the safety is obviously questionable. I don’t understand why manufacturers were ever allowed to supply them with cars, even for temporary use.

Manufacturers just do as they please and ask questions later or maybe never if no one questions their choices

Good advice Alan. And a very helpful yard.

I would be happier with steel wheels as alloys can be problematic and damaged more easily.

Andrew, I agree and posted much earlier that on my estate with run flat tyres there was no spare at all, nor provision to store it. So I bought a wheel and tyre matching those already on the car and take it in the back on longer journeys. If I’m more than a few miles from home and have a puncture, I don’t want to wreck an expensive run flat, and the chances are it will happen when no tyre sellers are open. The tyre, as you say, will be used when the others wear, so the cost was just an alloy wheel. The saving is security, not having to find an overnight stay if I’m a long way from home and, hopefully, not having to replace an otherwise decent tyre in the event of a puncture – I gather once you’ve run any distance on a run flat they are unlikely to be repairable.

I suppose the thinking behind the fact that the availability of a spare wheel is not an MOT test requirement is that it is a specification deficiency and not a safety hazard because a car with a flat tyre is not going anywhere, whereas a car with faulty brakes or badly worn tyres could still be driven and lead to a collision. However, I think it is important that any method of making a car with a flat tyre driveable should be tested and certified to be a safe system whether it be space-saver wheels, or run-flat tyres, or an expanding compound, or a sealant. Changing a wheel is not an easy or particularly safe operation and I don’t suppose sealing the tyre at the roadside is much easier or safer. Carrying out this task is doubly hazardous if the wheel is on the driver’s side, or if it is dark, or if visibility is impaired by fog or rain. So the best advice is to enrol with a reliable roadside assistance company and call them out if necessary. Whereas their first preference is to plug a puncture, that is not always effective and I think even they would prefer to swap a wheel than fiddle about with other methods because at least that does not compromise the performance of the car, its braking, its steering or its suspension. My view is that buying a car without a full-size spare wheel is a risk. The RAC say that the number of ‘puncture no spare’ incidents they deal with is rising rapidly [29,000 in 2010 going up to 250,000 in 2015 and still climbing] and all their patrols now carry a Universal Spare Wheel which is a five-stud, 17in lightweight alloy multi-fit wheel that fits a high proportion of vehicles; a four stud version is in development. Other roadside emergency companies are available and might have similar resources.

I think it has all been said – a full size spare makes economic sense, as the tyre can be used when others wear, sealant is no good for a badly damaged tyre, a run flat may run out of wear after a failure when no garages are open and you’re miles from home, etc…. It is just a retrograde step where the driver loses out. I keep a full size spare in the back of my estate car; no provision for any kind of spare – just runflats.

However, one spare does not cure all situations. We were going on holiday, stopped in a long queue at traffic lights, when a selfish driver who just could not wait came down the outside of the queue and cut in front as the lights changed. Unfortunately for him (but not to some of the waiting drivers’) he had not noticed the traffic light was on a small island with a steel surround that burst both his offside tyres. No injuries to anyone except no doubt his pride. Only one spare.

We had a Convo about the universal spare wheel a couple of years ago: https://conversation.which.co.uk/motoring/universal-spare-wheel-breakdown-puncture-repair-cars-aa-rac/ Nothing much seems to have changed except there will be fewer cars carrying spare wheels.

Yes, this topic does rather go round and round in small circles, doesn’t it?

From the introduction: “We’ll continue to tell manufacturers that we think all new cars should have a spare wheel of some capacity as a no-cost option….” Perhaps they were not receptive.

Had action been taken when the first manufacturer came up with a car without a spare wheel, the outcome might have been very different. Prompt action could be the answer to achieve quick wins.

Which? seems to keep “telling” organisations – spare wheels, Whirlpool, banks, energy companies, Amazon……the list goes on. But rarely does it seem to move anything forward. Many cars don’t have spare wheels, Whirlpool have not remedied Indesit dryers yet, Amazon seem to distribute products with 2 pin plugs. Perhaps this strategy does not work as well as one that does proper research and produces credible concrete proposals that can be pursued? Time for a rethink about the approach to consumers problems?

You can get a bit tyred of repetitive Convos that result in…………..?

Like me malcolm you think -action speaks louder than words , there is one thing that gets action of one sort or another thats an upcoming election . What influence can members of Which bring upon the Board ? I recently got an invite from the Co-op to put myself up for a associate member of the board , of course you would need to be voted in but its partially democratic in that you could directly put forward a point of view . I also got more exotic invites from the USA to attend meetings but no chance of that , several in Germany , likewise.

Patrick may best comment on this duncan.

The AA I believe carry temporary wheels, but have you asked a mobile tyre service to attend your car?