November 15, 2003
Flat - Flat - Flat
So I get a call from Wendy as she's driving home -- a horrid noise is coming from the front end and the car is pulling to one side. She drives a bit and it's getting worse. She pulls over into a market parking lot, gets out, sees a totally flat front tire. I grab a flashlight and race to the rescue in the old Camaro. 10 minutes later I'm replacing the flat with the spare. Unfortunately it is one of those ridiculous undersized doughnuts. The flat has the head of a large screw nearly centered in the tread. Big, nasty, tire killing screw.
So she drives home on the doughnut, says it pulls slightly, makes weird tread noise, but otherwise is driveable. I follow her in the Camaro. She chooses side streets. Just as she passes one driveway, a police car backs out, causing me to brake to avoid hitting him, speeds after Wendy doing about 40 and passes her -- on a residential street. Pity I don't have a movie camera.
Park in front of the house, have dinner, go to bed. Next morning she takes the Camaro to work. I take the Escort to Sam's Club for another pair of tires. (Did she mention she had a flat about a month ago and I had replaced the two rear tires?) About a third of the way there the Escort is pulling hard to the side. Stopping at a light I look out the passenger door and see that the doughnut has gone flat. So I cut my speed to 20 mph and continue -- don't have any more spares. Sam's opens at 10 am, I arrive late, 10:05, due to having to go slow. I'm fifth in line with *one* person working. He's taking orders, they have in stock a pair of tires to match the new ones on the rear, I order them for the front. He has me fill out the paperwork and take it inside the main store to pay. The lines in the store, a half hour after opening, are eight by eight -- eight registers open, at least eight overloaded carts in each. Finally pay, go back to the one worker in the tire store, explain the flat in the trunk with the large screw he keeps, the left front I want the tire to go into the trunk so I can get a rim and make it the spare, the flat doughnut (see below) can be shoved where the sun don't shine.
While I'm waiting, Wendy calls. She went out to look at something and noticed that the Camaro is sitting on a flat. Her spare is in the garage, since if you want to use the trunk of a Camaro you have to remove that huge 245 width tire. After a couple of hours at Sam's Club I drive home on all new tires. I dig in the garage and find the spare under the Christmas Lights (It has been a while since we emptied the trunk). Fire up the compressor and fill the air tank to 110 psi. Drive to rescue Wendy. Again. Jack up the Camaro and replace Wendy's third flat tire within 24 hours. None of the tires on the Camaro look to be any good.
I was wondering why you seemed pensive. Could it be that some material left over from your remodeling or maybe a neighbor is trying to tell you something!
Posted by: Wingo at November 21, 2003 06:04 PMAs far as the Escort is concerned.... The first flat I had, I picked up on Western Avenue in Torrance. The tire was already in pretty bad shape. It had a mysterious bulge on the side that was already there when we got the car. As I was going down Western on evening, a car suddenly backed out into the street and I had to drive into the center lane to avoid getting hit. As I hit the center lane, I hear a thwack sound as the tire hit something. Made it home, only to see the drivers side rear tire was flat. The flat mentioned above happened as I was leaving work and going down 223rd towards Western. I don't make a habit of running over objects in the road, but I did not see whatever I hit. I only heard two rather loud thunks. I pull to the side and look at my tires. Nothing. I continue home, a little nervous now, as I didn't like the sound I had just heard. At Torrance Blvd and Western, I notice that I am fighting to keep the wheel straight as the car wants to pull to the right. Now, I am nervous. I am thinking that I may have broken a suspension part. I call Mike. While he is on the phone with me, there is another loud thunk and I feel it throughout the whole car. Around this time, I also start to hear the wheel bearing squeal. I am really starting to panic. I had almost made it home when the car started vibrating badly and I could hear a low moaning type sound coming from the front end. I pull into the parking lot of a small market, get out, and see the passenger side front is completely flat. I figured the first two "thunks" was me running over a board that had the phillips head screw in it. Two rotations and the board broke off. Now, it's a matter of the screw getting driven into the tire. The thunk that Mike heard was me running over a large pothole on Western. This I know, because I hit it again later in the Escort, when I drove down to pick up Amanda at school after Mike put the "doughnut" on. The Camaro, I don't know. The tire gods just don't like me.
Posted by: Wendy at November 21, 2003 06:37 PM