Ugh, tire trouble. As the sole connection between the road and everything that makes your car capable of car stuff, a bum tire means you aren’t going anywhere. Assuming you regularly cast your peepers upon those precious rubber donuts to anticipate pending tread trouble, odds are when something does go bad, it’s a surprise – and with the worst possible timing, probably.
Today’s Autopian Asks invites you to share your stories about tires gone bad, and I’m sure most of us have had at least one or two experiences with flats or failures. That certainly includes me, especially if we factor in bicycle tires. But if we keep it to cars, there are two tales that stand out for me.
Before getting my brand-new-at-the-time 2012 Mustang GT, I had exclusively driven meagerly powered “regular cars” and was used to tires lasting at least a couple of years, no matter how hard I drove. Not so with the Mustang GT. Though I never performed any smokey burnouts (never had a desire, TBH), I did drive the car like it was meant to be driven, with lusty rows through the gears at every opportunity and – because I live in North Texas – only occasional chances to really feel the car’s handling, mostly brief moments on highway exit and entrance ramps. And so, after maybe six months with the car, I was surprised to discover what looked like paint on the rear tires. White paint, down the centers of the treads. Had I run over freshly-painted lines? No, wait, that’s not paint – those are the cords of the tire carcass. Yikes. I quickly learned how much more expensive fresh low-profile, high-performance rubber is compared to the cheap treads I was used to putting on Civics, Camrys, and Corollas. And I drove more gingerly after that.
The second tire tale is my most recent. Anytime there’s a hailstorm, the roofing guys descend to repair damaged shingles, and roofing nails soon litter the alleys that are the arteries of Texas suburbia. I inevitably pick up one or two during roofing season, which sucks, but I can generally seal the tires. But not my last puncture – it seemed nothing would work. Not the sticky-rubber strip plug, not the sealant I dumped in there after. What a drag. I Slack’d the whole fiasco.
… anyway, I eventually got it sealed up with the third attempt at a strip-type plug. That sucked.
Your turn:
Tell Us About The Last Time You Had Tire Problems
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
I have run-flat rubber bands on my present car, and I hate them. The ride is fine – but if I get within 5 feet of a pothole I end up a bent rim and a sidewall crack. The worst failure was a front tire blowout at 70 mph – the tread and the inner sidewall parted company all the way around the circumference of the tire.
Thank goodness I got a wheel & tire package when I got the car – but trips to the dealer are a nuisance and there’s a cap, which I’m over halfway to reaching despite only having the car for two years.
Before this I had a GMC Sierra Denali – the factory tires went out of round at about 30k miles and had to be replaced at my cost.
Before that? Just random flats from road hazards.
Last big tire incident was in September of 2023. Was out delivering pizzas here in my Veloster when I ended up getting a flat on the passenger rear while on my way back from my last delivery of the night. Limped home after my boss picked up the money and paid me out for the night. Took my partner’s Accent to work for the rest of the week until Friday night when I ended up hitting a pothole and sending the driver side front tire to the great tire fire in the sky. Ended up taking both cars to Discount Tire the next day, got two tires for each car. All was well until about two weeks later when I SOMEHOW RAN OVER AND PARKED ON A NAIL in the Veloster. Called in late to work and limped back to the Discount Tire and replace the other two tires. Now I have four new(er) tires on the Veloster and all has been well since then (knock on wood).
This past December my sister picked up a nail so I took her car to my long time tire store for repair.
“We can fix it this time but after January we can’t. We’re not allowed to repair tires that are six years old.”
“Six years old? I’m sure I bought these about two years ago.”
“Well, the date codes are 2020. Someone sold you old tires.”
“Yeah, that would be you. I bought the tires here.”
The store suddenly got quiet. I guess everyone was waiting for me to lose my temper but I didn’t. I have a new tire store, though. I won’t name the store, but it rhymes with Shavis.
Just a normal screw-in-the-tread story, easy to repair…which is good because its a 12″ tire that almost no one in the USA stocks had I needed a replacement.
The last time I had tire problems? That would be the last time my ex-wife was in the car, right before the divorce.
Harsh, but fair.
Not really a flat story, but…. Bought studded snow tires from Town Fair Tire in Norwich CT, 195/50/14 to go on my stock wheels on a 97 Jetta. They get it done I drive home. The whole way home its rubbing on EVERY dip and bump. The car was lowered but stock tire sizes never rubbed. I get home and take a closer look. They mounted cheaper 195/70/14 tires, but my bill said otherwise. I went right back and the dude behind the counter had a bit of that oh shit look like he was caught when I walked in the door. I let them know they mounted the wrong tires. They denied it and said those were the ones they showed me. After a bit of back and forth we start walking back to where the tire racks were. He was going to show me the tires again and prove that size was all they had even though I saw and touched the tires I wanted with my own hands. I happen to see a canvas throw or tarp type thing on the floor on the way back to the rack, I moved it and the tires I wanted to buy were UNDER the canvas. I know when we were going over the issue or when they saw me coming back in, one of the other guys went back and tried to cover them up real quick hoping I wouldn’t go all the way back there. The manager there then had to make up some excuse like one of his guys must have messed up and they will swap them out right away.
But there’s a strike two on them. I bought some standard all seasons from them on another occasion. As I’m turning out of their driveway I hear groaning and grinding like an axle is falling off. I pull right over to investigate what is going on. I see they never tightened on one of my rear wheels, they just spun the nuts on loosely and the tire was about to fall off.
And then, strike three. That SAME place pulled my lowered Cabrio right up to the curb after a tire change and folded my front VR6 chin spoiler under the bumper. Thankfully they are very flexible and just snap on and off.
You know what they say. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice….. We won’t get fooled again.
Strike one would have been plenty for me. Trying to cover it up makes it obvious that they’re scammers.
Not so much tire problem, but the TPMS sensor in one tire on my 2012 Honda Accord was malfunctioning and the dealer I bought it from who was doing maintenance couldn’t seem to fix it. I finally had a flat and took it to a tire place for replacement tires where they figured out which one it was, reset it and it’s been fine since.
The most interesting time was a decade ago. I got home from a short errand and got out of the car and heard the tire hissing. Had to have just happened within the last block. So being home, it let me just grab the tire, shove it in the other vehicle (pickup) and have it repaired. They said what happened was a house key was what made the hole because it was stuck in the tread. So they suspect the front wheel stood up the key just perfect for the back wheel to get punctured. They gave me the piece of the key which I’ve subsequently lost.
Near the start of a 2-hour late-night freeway run with four of us crammed into my tiny ’81 Prelude, I heard a grinding howl from the rear passenger side. Stopped and checked it out; nothing to see. Shrug.
Grinding continued. After a while I stopped again. Now there was a smell of hot rubber, and an inch-wide strip of tire tread that had been neatly shaved down. With a flashlight I found the top half of a snapped strut spring that had transferred its load directly onto the tire.
What was I gonna do at 2am with three drunk friends in the car?
(Today me: Call AAA for a tow and get a hotel room.)
Teenage me: Tire’s f**ked anyway — turn up the radio and keep driving.
We somehow made it home without a blowout. The next day I scraped my way to the shop, where a tech looked at the jagged spring resting on the exposed steel belt and then looked at me like the idiot I was.
That certainly includes me, especially if we factor in bicycle tires.
On my last long ride I was several miles from home and heading out onto the trails when I noticed something in my tire. Ugh, a goathead, no TWO goatheads! I gingerly pulled them out hoping they had not yet worked their way in to deep. The sound of air hissing out of my tire mirrored the feeling in my spirits only too well. Of course I had no repair kit or pump, I had relied on the puncture resistance of my tire which is normally good enough but goat heads are formidable. So I decided to ride home as quickly as possible hoping to minimize the pushing. One mile, two miles, the tire was as bit soft but still firm enough to ride. I cursed every red light, every stop sign. At mile three riding as fast as I could pedal I was getting tired but I really didn’t want to stop. Mile four, only one more to go. By the time I arrived home there was only a couple of psi left but it was just enough to roll on.
A post mortem inspection showed the goat heads had punctured *just* at the edge of the puncture resistant part of the tire. I found even more goat heads on the back tire. After that I added thornbuster strips to the tires, front and back.
Goat heads suck.
Yes, yes they do.
Goats OTOH are awesome.
A couple of years ago I was out riding on a trail near my neighborhood and got a flat. I checked the tire and found a thumbtack (WTF?). Then I started looking around and realized there were thumbtacks scattered all over the intersection of the trail. As hard as it is to fathom, it appeared someone had scattered thumbtacks to take out bicycle tires. That was fucked up.
Such a waste of good thumbtacks :(. I hope that person steps firmly on a thorned citrus branch.
A few years ago I had to do a very short notice 1800 mile round trip (even with an overpriced flight, there still would have been a 3 hour drive at the end so I opted to just drive). I picked my DD since I’d just done an oil change and tire rotation where I realized the tires were marginal (just at the bars on the former fronts, the former rears would be on the bars in about 3k; not great not awful) but I was a month from switching to the winter wheels/tires so no biggie. For the record, I was just waiting for the tires I wanted to go on sale at Costco as they were due to any time.
On the return leg just before the descent into Laramie WY, I felt a shudder from the rear. I pulled over and found a bubble in the passenger rear, dammit. I threw the spare on and limped to the WalMart in Laramie since they were likely to be my best bet to have tires in stock. Fortunately they did, unfortunately they were booked and shorthanded for installs. 6 hours later I finally got back on the road, just what you want in the middle of a 12 hour drive…
The tires I wanted went on sale 2 weeks later at Costco…
The run-flat tires on my wife’s X5 were horrible when they were full of air and unrepairable when they picked up a nail. The BMW predated me and she had the prescience to purchase a tire warranty when she bought it. We had three flats in two weeks. Twice on the same tire. With the third, the dealership held on to the car until some regional supervisor could look at it. There was no spare tire. (Hey… with run flats you don’t need a spare, right?)
We got tired of this and traded the BMW in on a new MDX which had conventional tires. Ironically, never got a flat with it.
My best puncture was in a rental car in Wisconsin.
I don’t know what I drove over, but it stabbed through the tread, through the wheel and then must have been ejected at high speed because it took out the rear bumper cover on its way out.
For a weird six months or so, my wife came home at least once a week with a tire puncture.
It was like she drove exclusively through construction sites with magnetic wheels. By the end I could pug a tire faster than I could fill the car with gas.
I have only had 2 tires go on me when driving. One was in my 1969 Plymouth Valiant Signet 100, and I was making a very fast U-turn and it had basically no bushings, so it ripped itself on the suspension. That was 30 years ago. Then a couple years ago my wife was driving the tire went flat and she called me. I walked her through using the sealant and pump for the car, no spare, and it got her home. The nail or whatever we had picked up had come out and I could hear the hissing even after sealant. The tires were at replacement time anyway, so I just replaced all four.
I have a flat on the rear of my ebike right now that I have to go replace. I have never had a bike tire go flat while I was riding thankfully. On a regular bike it would be no problem, but this is a rear motor ebike so it sucks to deal with. Makes me want to upgrade to a mid-drive. I did replace both tubes and tires on my acoustic bike a week ago due to age and wear.
I just had a valve stem get damaged over the weekend, caused by a brake pad flying off! Somehow, the tire itself wasn’t damaged, and of course, I installed new brakes.
My wife’s car. Rolling into the airport she picked up a nail or debris from a work zone. Makes it into the garage and called me since she needed to make her flight for work.
I got the fun of driving an hour each way plus paying for the parking garage twice. All to get an almost new tire replaced because it damaged close to the sidewall.
Best part was the bored tire guy telling me that the tire I unloaded from.my Jeep didn’t match what I use. Must never occurred to him that the spare was hanging on the rear end still.
Back in 1993 I got a punctured wheel. I was driving down the Throughway in The Bronx in my 84 Jetta and heard a loud bang, followed by the left rear tire going flat. I a 1/2″ chunk of the inner rim punched out along with a hole in the sidewall. Best guess is I ran over a piece of rear or one heck of a lucky shot from the street under the elevated highway. Fortunately I had a full sized spar and a replacement steel wheels was cheap
I experienced tire incidents numerous times while living in the north DFW metroplex, where construction has been booming for two decades. Each of our vehicles picked up screws, nails, and big splinters. One was in the shoulder of a tire on our minivan, so that required replacement. All were covered by Discount Tire road hazard insurance. Since moving away from the metro, we’ve had no tire trouble.
Low profile run-flats and L.A.’s pothole-riddled roads do not go well together. In 2 years, we replaced 4 tires due to blow-outs or tire bubbles leaving only 1 original tire making it past 15k miles (yup, one of the tires we replaced got replaced a 2nd time just a few months later). I will give the run-flats credit for always getting us home, even if it’s a little unnerving and a slow drive. At least most of the tires are now under a tire hazard warranty, since the “new car” tires didn’t cover hazards.
Not surprisingly, the dealer’s “our tires cost the same” sign only referred to the actual tire price, and by the time you add all their other fees, it was like 50+% more expensive than Costco, but at least they can get the tire the next day. It takes ~2 weeks to get these tires replaced at Costco (and another tire shop couldn’t or wouldn’t even order them!).
The last time I had tire trouble was when my car was shot 12 times on the side of the street. It seems like it was used as cover in a shootout because it was shot on four sides (There didn’t seem to be any blood thankfully). On top of dealing with all of that (needed new windows, radiator, condenser, fan assembly, and some HVAC tape to cover the bullet holes), one of the bullets went through the sidewall of my tire (of course), and given the age of the tires it was time for a new set. My local used tire shop (shout out Torreon Tire!) didn’t have any in my size (Ford Fiesta tires are small for the US), saying I should take my car over to Pep Boys and have them put some new tires on. After doing so, all seemed well, for a few days.
Unfortunately the wheel that took a bullet had a very slow leak that meant I had to refill the tire weekly. I thought maybe the wheel was damaged, so had Pep Boys check their work but they couldn’t find any leak and said it was good.
Disappointed, I took my car back to the used tire shop, and I have to give them a shout out! Torreon Tire Shop in Chicago has been fantastic. They popped the tire off and showed me there was a barcode sticker right on the tire bead! After removing the sticker and remounting the tire they charged me $20 and sent me on my way. I was in and out in 20 minutes! I haven’t had an issue since. As with most things, the moral of the story is to try to use a local trusted shop rather than the big chains when you can.
Did insurance cover your car being shot 12 times?
I took comprehensive coverage off a couple months earlier because the car is not worth that much. That will teach me! Your car getting shot counts as vandalism according to my insurance agent. He did try to help me out asking if maybe the car was sideswiped during a drive-by, as that would count as a collision.
The car: a 1982 Mercedes 300td
I just bought it and decided to take my girlfriend and I to my parents’ house 3 hours away. It ran great and the tires looked new.
I got the first flat about 1.5 hours in. I pulled off and started to change the tire. Uh oh, the lug wrench doesn’t fit the lug bolt. Just as I’m regretting my decision, one of those AAA Road Ranger service trucks pulled up behind me. He had the wrench and helped me change the tire.
I got about another hour further when the second tire blew. I was like 2 miles from the exit, so I limped to the exit. Yeehaw Junction is the real name of the town. They had a tire store open. They put a new tire on and sent me on my way.
The third tire blew about 25 miles from my parent’s house. My girlfriend was ready to murder me at this point. I called my dad and he came and picked us up. Had the car towed to their city and I got 4 brand-new tires. Good as new.
This literally happened this past weekend… Was on a 3 day tour with my college wind symphony (we took a coach bus) and came back to both of my passenger side tires completely flat. No slashes, no damage. I call AAA and they send out a tow truck. He goes to air up the tires and says “Wow, someone must really hate you” because someone took the valve cores out of my tires. I don’t know who had the specific tool and targeted SPECIFICALLY MY CAR out of the 5 parked in our little rental parking lot.
I remember valve caps on the tubes for my bicycle that had an extended top that was perfect for removing (or tightening) Schrader valves.
Had a puncture on the way home from work. Sucks but I had a full size spare, jack, tyre wrench and I could change it myself without needing to call out the recovery truck.
The tyre wrench was the standard one that came with the car, like this
Just as I was starting to undo the 5th and final nut, I heard a loud CRACK and saw that the head of the wrench had snapped off the handle, due to a poor weld.
Still had one nut which was fully tightened, and nothing to undo it with, so had to call out the recovery truck after all. Who promised to be there in 40 minutes but took over 2 hours.
FYI this was in the UK and the car was a MK2 Renault Laguna
Lesson learned, I now carry a 2-foot breaker bar and a torque wrench. Of course I’ve never had a puncture in the 14 years since
For daily carry, I’ve had good luck with the cross-bar type. They take up less space and can still provide sufficient leverage since you can push and pull at the same time. If you have a good place in your trunk to stick a 2-foot breaker bar it probably doesn’t matter too much, though.
I’ve had the same cross bar wrench for like 20 years across like 10 vehicles. The fact it has 4 different nut sizes is a life-saver.
Pro-Tip: You can stand on it for extra leverage.
Thanks, but I have good storage under the boot floor for a few tools, spare bulbs etc
Anything Fix-a-Flat couldn’t fix would be about 550-600k miles ago. Anything at all, about 150k.
The car: a 1998 BMW e36
I refreshed the suspension and installed Raceland Ultimo coilovers. I bought a set of 17 x 9.5 Corvette 35th anniversary wheels and some 214/45r17 tires. That narrow tire is the only hope of getting a 9.5″ wheel onto an e36.
First problem was that I couldn’t find a tire shop to install the tires. Outside of spec.
I eventually found an extremely sketchy tire shop that did it. Okay. Fine.
Got them mounted up and they vibrate. I thought it was the sketchy shops balancer, so I had them re-balanced. Helped a bit.
The problem was that the Corvette wheels are 5×4.75 (or 5×120.65mm) and BMWs are 5x120mm. The internet was equally divided if you could run them or not.
I found if I was tremendously careful in tightening lug nuts, I could get them to work. Oh, did I mention I was running 40mm spacers on the front and 35mm on the rear? I’m sure that didn’t help.
I eventually used the machine lathe at work to machine some spacers with a 120.65 hubcentric ring. That solved it.
But damn, I must have taken those damn wheels and tires on and off like 60 times in the three weeks it took to get it sorted.