[MoparNorm]

I have AAA!

AAA is great, however they will not leave the pavement.
It's not uncommon for a Jeep to lose two or three tires on a single stretch of trail.
Gimmicks don't work in the backcountry.
Offroad tires are already over $400 each, if the tire companies go to an alternative it will raise our prices even more.
Same for pickup owners.
Not a complaint, just an observation.

 

[TWX]

I once had to pull over for a flat tire, along the Interstate, and had no cell phone service where I stopped.

I don't want to have to tow a car simply because of a flat tire. To me that's stupid. I can change it and be back on the road within an hour even in rough conditions to change it so long as the tools and wheel are there.

At this point in my life I can afford to have a car towed, but there were times in the past when I couldn't. I expect that a lot of people really couldn't afford to have a car towed if they didn't have some kind of existing roadside service.

As Aldo has pointed out, not having a spare is a real pain and gets really expensive quickly, and the effort to carry a spare isn't much, and even a full-diameter narrow-width spare is acceptable to finish the drive.

 

[acewiza]

The main reason (not talking about Jeeps or trucks here. That is a different subject - totally different vehicles, totally different applications) passenger cars are coming with run-flats is twofold. #1 - tire technology has improved to the point where reliability is not really an issue any more for the average driver on paved roads. For example, my family and I have operated a small fleet around here consisting of various vehicles without a single flat ...ever in 15 years. Literally in the past 15 years we have have not had one, and including several cross-country trips in the summer during that time. That might have been a little harder target to hit in the 15-30 years ago time frame.

#2 - a large majority of the most popular smaller and even mid-sized vehicles either are not (? why - see #1) or cannot be designed to practically carry a spare without sacrificing other aspects of the design.

So whether you like it or agree with it or not, run flats are here to stay.

 

[MoparNorm]

Well, ... they are here to stay ...until there is a drop in tire sales...

 

[aldo90731]

I inquired about runflats when I blew that front tire on my Challenger. America's Tire advised me not to waste my time and money with them.

In their opinion, they are pricey, they do not handle was well as regular tires, at best you can limp 50 miles on them...and in the end they would have made no difference in a case like mine where I blew a tire.

 

[acewiza]

America's Tire advised me not to waste my time and money with them.

I would consider buying tires somewhere else - they gave you bad advice based on old information. Some people get ideas in their head and just refuse to change their opinions for whatever reason or ignore new information:

http://www.tirereview.com/article/108002/runflat_tires_offer_dealers_profits_drivers_peace_of_mind.aspx

http://www.tirebusiness.com/article/20100917/NEWS/309179995/run-flat-tires-their-use-is-growing-slowly

If they are good enough for Corvettes and BMWs they are good enough for me. :thumbsup:

(I bet my wife's BMW would run rings around your Challenger - on run flat tires!)

 

[Jeff2KPatriotBlue]

Thanks for the links. For the record, I didn't like ABS brakes when they first came out either, but accept them now.

Another prospective technology is a "spoked" tire. This has a series of flexible "truss" structures in it, and doesn't use air pressure at all... will post a link when I find it.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/tweel-airless-tire.htm

here it is.

 

[aldo90731]

(I bet my wife's BMW would run rings around your Challenger - on run flat tires!)

Riiiiiiight

 

[Jeepophile]

I didn't read the whole thread here, but how about those upcoming urethane(?) no-air-pressure jobs? I wonder if the wear/reliability profiles of those will render spares/mini-spares/sealant cans/pressure gauges/etc. near-obsolete?! Whoa Nelly!

Thanks for the links. For the record, I didn't like ABS brakes when they first came out either, but accept them now.

Another prospective technology is a "spoked" tire. This has a series of flexible "truss" structures in it, and doesn't use air pressure at all... will post a link when I find it.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/tweel-airless-tire.htm

here it is.

What I referred to above....

 

[Jeepophile]

If they are good enough for Corvettes and BMWs they are good enough for me. :thumbsup:

(I bet my wife's BMW would run rings around your Challenger - on run flat tires!)

With all due respect---cars with the one-inch-or-so tall hip/cool/etc. tires that are becoming more common standard equipment these days are sitting ducks for the potholes that are increasingly part and parcel of cities/counties prioritizing their spending on things other than maintaining our roads. One pothole and your $600-and-up wheel and your $200-and-up tire are gone just like that! Very common occurence in the Greater L.A. area, for example. And I write this as a fairly careful-about-slamming-into-potholes driver.

That is one reason I stick with vehicles with more traditional, more forgiving, taller profile tires---at least until perhaps they perfect the multispoke/urethane(?)/whatever-they-call-them tire-less wheels. And yes, til then I'll also stick with a full-size, 5th matching-wheel tire I can rotate with the other four, and which gives me a one-tire hedge against tire model changes that often occur before you wear out a set of tires----when you get a non-repairable flat in those cases, beyond the wear difference in new vs used tires, you get a different-looking/handling/wearing new tire vs. the other three. For my 10-year-plus-old vehicle, I actually have 6 matching tires/wheels that I rotate (keeping the 6th one sealed in big trash bags between rotations to reduce deterioration).

Lawyer-required disclaimer (heh, heh): directional and different size front vs. rear tires, etc. can call for a somewhat different discussion, no?!

 

[TWX]

Lawyer-required disclaimer (heh, heh): directional and different size front vs. rear tires, etc. can call for a somewhat different discussion, no?!

Directionality is an issue for me for my non-Mopar, the only tires in my size are all directional in their rotation, even though the two halves of the tread are mirrors of each other. When it's time for the next tire rotation I'll probably have to have them dismounted, turned around, and remounted on the wheels so that what was the more-worn inside becomes the outside, and the less-worn outside can wear down a bit. Annoying and it'll probably add $100 to the cost.

I don't see a problem with the position of at least a donut tire. When they took gas tanks out from behind the rear axle and threw them under the rear passenger's seat under the floor, they suddenly had a huge place for a spare back there instead. My Stratus had a cavernous trunk even with the concealed spare, no issues. It wouldn't have been in the way if the car had been RWD. The only possible interference there is for minivans with a rear seat that folds into the floor, like a Stow-n-go seat, and Chrysler solved that by placing the spare up under the floor between the front seats on the FWD vans where an RWD transmission would sit if the vehicle were equipped with one. Sure, it's a pain to retrieve it, but it's not impossible and it's out of the way, albeit kind of annoying to check the tire pressure in.

Having been stuck with flats a few times, I don't want to be without a spare, even if it's a crappy little donut spare.

 

[Bob Lincoln]

The last two flats I have had were from a bubble and and an abraded sidewall - both were sidewall failures. No repair kit is going to help me there. If I can't get a spare tire at no cost, I'm not buying the vehicle.

 

[acewiza]

I'd rather not worry about spares at all and just drive on run-flats.

 

[MoparNorm]

I'd rather not worry about spares at all and just drive on run-flats.

Yeah...we all got that...and there are situations where nothing substitutes for a real spare.

 

[aldo90731]

The last two flats I have had were from a bubble and and an abraded sidewall - both were sidewall failures. No repair kit is going to help me there. If I can't get a spare tire at no cost, I'm not buying the vehicle.

I feel the same way. Because I have been doing business with my dealer for a decade and we know each other well, they got Chrysler to get me an aftermarket spare tire kit for my SRT...and now I am a happy camper

I recently traded my SRT 392 for a 300 SRT and kept the spare tire kit. If I hadn't been able to get a spare tire I'd bought a sports sedan from someone else --despite my long, deep love for Chrysler and SRT...

 

[valiant67]

Back in the 1970s my grandparents bought a new Ford Granada. For whatever reason ( think it was a rubber worker's strike) the car had no spare tire, just a bare rim in the trunk. Between the time they bought the car and when the spare tire arrived, they had four flat tires, three of which required the tires to be replaced. They ended up with four brand new tires on the ground and the last slightly used original spare in the trunk. Then never had another flat tire again on that car in the five years they kept it. Talk about bad luck.

 

[aldo90731]

So I went to use the infamous spare tire kit I got for my SRT: the aftermarket scissor jack busted into pieces!!! It couldn't handle the weight of the 300. Thankfully I hadn't removed the wheel yet. Cr*p!

I am going to have to find a more sturdy jack...maybe the OE that comes in the 300C...?

 

[TWX]

Thinking about my flats...

The Cordoba suffered a partial tread separation and it's a good thing that the car body was so tough, because about a foot and a half of partially-separated tread slapped the underside of the car repeatedly at freeway speeds until I managed to pull over. Somehow it didn't screw up the quarter panel, just took the undercoating off.

The Stratus hit a fallen-off bumper from a tractor trailer that cut deeply up into the sidewall, almost to the rim. Another vehicle that hit the same debris broke a wheel. Previously a front wheel had gone flat from a nail.

The '82 Dodge Truck had a tire come apart at highway speeds in the middle of nowhere, and that one did damage the fender and wheel well. and bent the brake dust shield in against the rotor.

The Nissan Hardbody suffered a bubble in the tire that was too severe to keep driving on.

The work van had a tire failure when I ran over a dark-colored chunk of jagged metal.

A run-flat wouldn't have worked in at least half of these situations.

So I went to use the infamous spare tire kit I got for my SRT: the aftermarket scissor jack busted into pieces!!! It couldn't handle the weight of the 300. Thankfully I hadn't removed the wheel yet. Cr*p!

I am going to have to find a more sturdy jack...maybe the OE that comes in the 300C...?

I'd go with a small bottle jack. At one point they were OE, my truck came with one, but they probably cost too much for car makers to continue to include them, hence the screw-type jack.

Or, you could carry a small aluminum "racing" jack when you take road trips so if you have a tire problem away from easy roadside assistance. In-town you might be fine without a jack as a service truck can be at your location within an hour usually, so it's not as big of a burden to be without tools so long as you have all of the parts that you need.

 

[aldo90731]

The bottle jack pushes up from the axle? There is not enough room under the rocker panel.

The SRT has these molding extensions covering the rocker panels that is going to make fitting any jack a bit tricky.

 

[TWX]

I hadn't considered that.

I have seen a couple of hydraulic jacks that mount the bottle sideways more like a conventional floor jack, but are lighter and smaller, more like a screw-jack.