Walsted

Fifty miles into a fifty-file mile commute home, there is a section of road with a 45mph speed limit, and no shortage people in SUVs and pickups coming from the other direction who don't realize (or care) that it is a two-way road. Consequently, I drive near the edge of the road, and on one morning, I hit a pothole. Big, deep, and about a foot inboard of the edge of the road. Not so much an indentation in the asphalt as a total lacking of asphalt surrounded by asphalt terminating in vertical right angles. When I hit, I wondered if I had any damage. Within 100 yards, the rear-end started wallowing like I had a flat, so I pulled over.

Darn! Yep, it was flat. I pulled out my electric tire inflator, and it didn't pump up.

I pulled out the new jack (as compared to the "no jack" I previously had), elevated the car, and tried to inflate the tire, seeing if maybe was an issue with the way the tire was sitting on the bead. The tire still wouldn't inflate.

I tried Fix-a-flat. No help.

I pulled the tools, laptop, and lunchbox out of the trunk and put them on the passenger side, and changed tires. I put a few more psi into the spare, and examined the wheel that came off. The rim was bent so bad it wasn't contacting the bead at one point. Bummer. I had to start driving back to work by 4pm, and the spare wasn't going to cut it for a 55 mile each way commute for six more days.

I drove home, pulled the tire out of the trunk, and saw it also had a nail in the tread. I pulled the (fourth) nail and plugged the (fourth) hole, figuring the tire could be reused. (Maybe not reused for long, though, since they had about 40,000 miles on them.) I tried banging the rim of the wheel back, to hopefully give me a few days to order wheels online, but that failed miserably, and all I managed to do was discover a crack that may have been caused by the pothole or by the mallet I was using to massage the rim back in to place.

I called Pep Boys to see if they had a set of replacement rims and would swap tires with multiple plugs, and was told that they could have them by that afternoon. That wouldn't work, since I had to be back to work by that afternoon. I called Discount Tire, and they had four 15 inch rims with a 4x100 pattern in stock, (MB FiveX) and would do the swap, provided there was no hole in the sidewall.

When I got to Discount, the lot was almost full, and I was in line behind about half a dozen people. I was finally seen and on my way out the door to get breakfast around 8:45am, with an estimate of "at least an hour" before it was complete.

I got back a little before the car went to the bay at 9:45. At 10am, I was shown an inch-long cut in the sidewall of tire that was on the bent rim. Bummer. The only tires they had in a close size at a reasonable price were assymetrical 195/50VR15 Eagle GTs. Sold! to the sleepy guy with few options.

I left Discount Tire at a little before 10:30am, with new wheels and tires chosen solely on availability and price. I also kept the three old stock wheels that weren't bent and cracked. The new wheels/tires combination ride a lot differently than the stock wheels with Yoko Avids, and not in a good way.

So, in summary, poor road maintenance and oncoming traffic forcing me to the edge of the road resulted in me spending a hefty chunk of change to obtain poorer ride quality. Not my best day, car wise.