The Spare Tire Thread

Had the first big (900 miles) roadtrip in my 67 Newyorker last year. Had been relying on an ancient 'Fleetwood' bias ply as the spare prior to that. So I decide a week before that I should source a decent radial. Walked 1 block to my lcal tyre shop not expecting much and lo and behold - there on the rack is a near new, 2nd hand 225/75-15 - the correct sized radial and a car tyre to boot (its a very common 4x4 or light truck size in Aus - extremely uncommon car tyre). Fitted and balanced for the grand total of $50 on a 15" Dodge rim that I supplied. So far over 12 months later and I havent had to top up the pressure. Money very well spent.

BTW Aldo (and others) I checked the terms of our Dodge Roadside assist here in Australia last night on line (we have a new Journey). We are fully covered for flats at least in this country.

Seems like a lot of people need to be very vocal with customer service to get the situation rectified in the US.

A few years back I had a very low milage 1977 Aussie Valiant Charger. The original owner had removed the original styled steel rims and tyres, and installed a set of alloy rims with wider tyres when the car was nearly new and luckilly stored the originals. Occasionally for local shows I'd put them back on and drive the couple of low speed miles to the show and back. To all intents and purposes on the outside the tyres looked fine. Great tread depth, supple sidewalls and tread with no visible weathering. One day whilst pushing the car around in the garage, I hear a 'sloshing' sound coming from the tyres after stopping. Thinking that they had somehow absorbed water (mirraculous has they held pressure perfectly) I took one and had it pulled from the rim. Inside were hundreds of rubber 'ball bearings' ranging up to an 1/8" or so in diameter. The tyres were literally disintegrating from the inside. After that I would only put the tyres on at the shows after getting there........

As an aside they were around 25 year old OEM tyres, called Dunlop Aquajets - used on all Aussie performance cars of the day. Similar I suppose to Polyglas GT's.

They were more popularly know after the technology passed them by in the late 70's as Dunlop Aquaplanes' though.

These tyres