In the case of my ’66 F-100, it’s been 30 years exactly, when I replaced the ancient bias ply spare with this also quite venerable Michelin X 700R 15 radial, one of the four on aftermarket spoke wheels that were on the truck when I got it. I found some very low mileage Michelin 235R 75 15s on steel wheels in a junkyard at the time (1987), and ditched the spokes and old Michelins except for this spare. And how come I removed it? Not because I had a flat.
No, I’ve had some issues with my taillights, from worn out sockets. Fortunately new ones are only $5.75 at my local auto parts store, right in the electrical section. How many other vehicles 50 years old are cheap parts so readily available?
Meanwhile, I’m trying hard to remember when I last needed to actually use a spare on one of my cars. Over 30 years? The time I thought I could park (illegally) in a UCLA parking lot in Westwood with one of those tire spikers in my Jeep? Seriously; how incredibly dumb was that? I stupidly thought my big all-terrain tires would be tall enough to push the little spikes down. Not. Poof!!
One thing is for certain: this one is not going back under the truck. Why lug around the extra dead weight? Plus I don’t have a jack and lug wrench in it anyway. Useless.
I believe the original spare is still residing in the trunk of my ’64 Falcon. It’s a REMINGTON tire. It came with the Falcon when the car when was given to me in 1989 as a motorized present. I’ve always assumed the Remington was the orig. spare that came with the car back in 1964; I’ve never seen another Remington tire. (There’s was a jack in the trunk, too. Still have that as well).
The Remington tire has been driven on for about 15 miles back around 1995/96. It’s been parked in the trunk ever since. I probably should not drive on that tire now should I need to, but considering it’s likely been residing in the trunk for nearly 53 years with little use I’m just going to leave it there.
I do have radial tires on the Falcon. In fact, I could use a new set of radials in the near future . . .
I think Remington was one of Goodyear’s off-brands, and I doubt that it was original to your Falcon. I had to look it up, because I thought I remembered that Remington was Montgomery Ward’s store brand. But that was Riverside.
Thanks for the info about the Remington, J P C. The Falcon was originally bought at Valley Motors in Hanover, Pennsylvania and put into service on Aug. 3, 1964. (That date is stamped in the owners manual). The 1st owner was a lady over 65 and I am the 2nd. The plaid ‘mat’ is still in the trunk and I figured the Remington was the original spare. If not the Remington, I wonder what brand of bias-ply tire could’ve been in there? Can’t imagine a donut spare would’ve been stuffed in the trunk back in ’64 . . . but what do I know? I didn’t spring to life until ’73.
I have no idea what brand of tire was originally on your Falcon. Didn’t Ford use a lot of Firestones back then? I tried to look at the shot I took in the trunk if a 61 Falcon with an original spare, but could not make out the name on the tire.
At least in the Los Angeles area, Firestone sold mostly to Ford, U. S. Royal to GM and Goodyear to Chrysler. All three car and tire companies had plants here. There is even a street named Firestone Bl.
Last time I had to change a flat was probably 4 years ago on my Tacoma. Believe it or not all 4 tires on that set got a flat one way or another and were repaired. I didn’t even need to keep checking the spare “descender” mechanism as I got to use it so much. I still keep a good eye on it though and make sure to clean under there when I do my weekly pressure washings in the driveway.
With my new sets of summer and winter tires I’ve only had one leak so far and the TPMS caught it. I used to think they were stupid as it would be obvious to anyone with a clue if their tire goes flat. Very useful though if a tire slowly goes flat and gives you time to get to the tire shop without having to remove it.
Also funny that it happened to my winter set that had the sensors while my summer set does not. Toyota makes you buy the sensor at $80 each plus install plus calibration to the truck’s computer. I’m too cheap for that so I get to see the TPMS icon all summer long.
When? At the last All American Day, as an anchor for my shade gazebo. I’m paranoid about it blowing away and wreaking havoc on someone’s big buck paint job.
I had spent the day with my sister, out in a rural area about 30 miles from Salt Lake City. I was driving our old 1996 Ford Contour on my way home; it was just getting dark. This happened about five years ago, but I was already plenty old enough to play the “helpless elderly lady” card; I’d only gone about a mile when I hit a nasty pothole and BLAM! Flat left rear. Pulled over to a too-narrow shoulder, turned on my flashers, and went to check out the state of the (full-size, never-used) spare. FLAT! I don’t think we’d ever checked it for pressure. So I just called the cops. Two patrolmen responded, a county sheriff’s deputy and a highway patrolman, both very young and very understanding and kind. The county sheriff’s man actually took my spare, drove six miles to the nearest gas station, aired it up, brought it back to me, and put it on. Must have been a slow night on the criminal-mischief front, but I wasn’t about to turn down the help. I wrote both law-enforcement agencies emails of gratitude. Sometimes it isn’t so bad being an old lady.
The last car I had didn’t even have a spare tyre. According to the used car dealership we got it from, “cars don’t come with those anymore”. While that generally holds truth today, this model DID come with a (small) spare as standard, even the base model. If any further proof was needed what a scummy place that was under its veneer of friendliness.
Earlier this year, in march or so. Don’t know if I got the tiny puncture in my employer’s gravel parking lot or on the way there but it was dead flat when I got off work. Furthermore it was a rainy week and there was only a small patch of concrete where I could even jack the car up, surrounded by muddy puddles. Needless to say I did get dirty. This was however my first ever flat tire.
Ha, my 24 year old Mercedes still has the original factory spare sitting in the wheel well in the boot. Used it once or twice to get me to the tyre shop to fix the odd leaks on my normal set of wheels, but then it goes straight back into the boot for the next emergency. Can’t use it under normal circumstance as both the trim and tyre size no longer matches the wheels I’l running on. Pity; it a beautifully preserved Pirelli P600 with tread as deep as the Grand Canyon.
Aww, now you’re gonna need the spare! Half the battle reaching a goal is often just to take what seems like futile action towards it.. and then it usually takes care of itself somehow without consequence. Now with the goal of continuing for another 30 years and beyond without needing a spare handy knowing you have no spare is now just tempting fate, lol!
Good luck! 😉
I’m not answering this question because I know if I talk about it I’ll have my first flat ever requiring a spare. Of course it will be on a steer tire, taking a hard corner on the Coquihalla doing 80 mph with a full load of passengers and luggage over a bunch of bobbing heaves before that big valley where everyone itches to do 100+ downhill with flying abandon…
All my vehicles came with spare tires. The couple I’ve owned with ‘donut’ spares, had them swapped with a full size rim and tire.
My most exciting spare tire adventure happened with my ’98 Nissan Altima, coming back home from Virginia Beach on a hot July Sunday afternoon in 2009.
I had checked my tire pressures just before leaving (something I don’t usually do) but had neglected to reinstall the right-rear valve-stem cap. Guess which valve had the slow leak. Guess which tire went completely flat 20 minutes later, inside the Chesapeake Bay-bridge tunnel!
First, I heard the ominous roaring sound of a deflated tire. Then the metallic sound of my steel rim rolling on pavement. In my rear-view mirror as I exited the ‘tube’, I enjoyed the thrill of seeing the large black ring of tread from my shredded Michelin bounce away into the railing!
Then I limped slowly a half-mile to the first emergency turn-off.
Unloading all my tools and crap from the trunk to reach the spare, with the traffic whizzing by, sure was fun!
Finally, I got the spare mounted and was just putting everything back in the car, when a yellow Chesapeake bridge-tunnel service truck pulled up to see if I needed help!
Since my spare looked a bit low, I asked if they had an air-pump.
“no, sorry” came the reply.
I made it off the bridge and drove carefully, 12 miles or so to the first service station I saw, only to discover they were closed, and I had no change for the tire-pump!
Then several more miles until I found an open service station, where I could get change for their tire-pump.
Today, In addition to full-size spares, I keep 12-volt tire pumps in my vehicles!
This year, I did have to put the spare on my ’96 Camry to pass inspection. But that wasn’t exciting.
Happy Motoring, Mark
There was a time, when there were “service stations” that there were air and water hoses in the ground next to the gas pumps, free for the taking all the time, even when the station was closed. No change needed.
I had a blowout back in the ’80s after running over a huge Craftsman screwdriver that stuck in the tire. I’ll never forget the sound. The car only had about 8k miles on it and I wanted to put better tires on it than the orignal Goodyear Vectors anyway because for some reason everyone of those I had seen wore funny. I went one day to Sears and wanted to see just what the screwdriver was worth. It was actually more than a new Vector tire would have cost. I came out ahead. PS…If you have a truck or SUV with a full size spare, check them from time to time They have a TPS like the rolling tires on later models that can trip the aggravating “low tire pressure” light.
I’ve had a number of flats over the years, particularly with my 2001 Nissan Frontier, but my dad had gifted me a 12V plug-in tire pump in advance, and that saved me just about every time in the 17 years I’ve had that truck. I’ve never used the spare, or even winched it just to make sure. However, I usually ask when I replace my tires every so often to take the best of the four and swap that to the spare, just to make sure I still have a viable one. 30 minutes on the pump always allowed me enough time and miles to get to a decent looking tire store for a repair.
The last time I remember actually using a spare is 1987 when I took my dad’s 1975 Toyota Hi-Lux SR5 short-bed from ATL to Birmingham, AL to see a Girl I met during a medical residency interview a few months before. Just outside her city the LR tire blew out and shredded–dad still had steel-belted radials so it was a memorable tangled mess. Changing it was not a problem (the spare was good), but I was a grimy sight to see when I finally got to her place. She was both amused and sympathetic.
The only other time I handled flats & spares was in the early 1990s when I was seeing a visiting RN who lived on the southern Jersey shore. I was staying with her and she left for her rounds, and minutes later not two blocks away was calling me frantically because she clipped a curb and blew out both tires on the passenger side of her Mishubushi Galant. “No problem, Donna” and went out to see what she wrought. I ferried her around in my truck at the time (cramped as it was), and we returned to her car. I just took the two flats off and we went to Pep Boys where she bought two new tires that were mounted on the old rims, and returned to her car and put the new ones on. She thanked me as only a Girl can. Though it didn’t work out in the long term, I still keep in touch with her.
Best tire change story was my then yoga spouse (like an office spouse) at work telling me that a few years ago she changed a tire on the roadside in a dress because her then bf who was with her was a total wimp and klutz. She was a former paramedic and outdoorsy type who is into off-roading with her current fiancé, so she was no shirking violet to confronting adversity and wasn’t into playing helpless and she suffered fools poorly. She pointedly did the change (all 110 lbs of her). I called it pioneer spirit. She and her Jeep are now in the high altitudes of Northern Colorado.
The odds of getting a flat tire are:
1. directly proportional to the amount of rain falling;
2. inversely proportional to the amount of air in the spare; and,
3. a dead certainty if you’re wearing white.
Hit ice block and a pothole, so had to use the “donut” spare 2 times in past 3 years.
By the way, I don’t care that I don’t have a “full size spare”, either. Waste of space, weight and rubber.
Last August on my 2005 Town and Country minivan before a trek from NJ to Niagara Falls. Had never been dropped. Perfect location to store it as designed from Chrysler. Dead center under the floor board between the front seats. It’s only accessible by inserting a tool in a hole in the floor and cranking it down. You need to take great care not to smash the hvac controls or radio while turning the handle. Once that’s done, just crawl under the side of the van and drag it out. Nice!
I thought it better to check it in my driveway than under the conditions tonyola pointed out.
Space-saver and 30 psi low!
It looks like Chrysler fixed the crawling-underneath-to-get-the-spare issue. Here’s the video I found describing the procedure:
Clever ! perhaps too clever….
-Nate
One of the more interesting things was it explained why there was an imprint of a tire-tread molded onto the plastic cover/plug at the bottom front of the center console.
Not more than 5 months ago, when Dad managed to flatten 3 tires in one night after he borrowed my car, ran over two curbs, one manage to bend the rim on both left side wheels, and then again with the donut on the front. (yes, we had a serious talk about his driving ability at that point- he’s 76 years old) He got cataract surgery which dramatically improved his eyesight.
The last time is when I got a screw in one of the original Dunlop’s on the Fit. TPMS caught it before I noticed. Donut went on and Costco fixed the tire because the screw was in the tread.
The General all-terrain spare under the Chevy truck is original. I do inspect for cracks and air leakage at every rotation. The high pressure valve stems are still good. Spare tires and rims were optional on full-size trucks back then. Fleets often did not expect drivers to change tires and used mobile tire services instead.
I had to use it once when under the rear of the truck in the rain and mud in the middle of the night going to work while in dress clothes. Never again. Since then I have only used it once in 18 yrs – and it is now IN the bed of the truck! And that use to to road debris in the road from an accident.
I’m just about to buy my first car with nothing to spare, a Ford C-Max hybrid with a fat pile of batteries where the fifth tire should go. This gives me pause, because I’ve mounted a spare fairly often. Old nails and screws from a hundred years of farm and house construction often surface from my skimpy gravel driveway. Time to budget for several new inches of gravel!
Run-flat tires have a bad reputation for ride and noise, so I’m searching for other ching for other workarounds. My car insurance has a road service benefit, so there’s that. Maybe they could take me and the wheel to a tire store. I also plan to buy a set of winter wheels, giving me four spares. And a Focus compact spare from a junkyard couldn’t cost much. If I ever drive into the back of beyond, I could mount that on a rear cargo tray, like a modern Continental kit.
I used the original spare once on my old ’70C 10 in the 30 years I owned it. It was around 1998, one of my rear (very old) tires threw a chunk of tread but still held air and got me to work. I left the bad tire and rim (was working graveyard shift) and asked the dealership’s tire department to get 2 new tires and replace the bad one during the next day, then I put the spare on the other side and left the second rim and tire and had it replaced during the next day. I still had my white spoke rims I bought in ’76 but the spare was a stock rim and tire.
When I sold the truck in 2006 it still had the original spare under the bed.
Never have used the spare on my bought new ’04 Titan, I should lower it and check air pressure, but I keep a compressor in the truck so could air it up after I change the tire if needed.
Used the spare in the ’86 Jetta twice that I can remember in 27 years, around 1996 I had a RF front tire blow out in heavy rain, car went up on 2 wheels and crossed all lanes of traffic from left to right and slammed into the muddy dirt berm next to the road, breaking a front motor mount, bending the rim, and losing the hubcap and the VW emblem out of the grille. No body damage, luckily. Put on the mini spare and after a few miles hit a rock that was under water on the flooded I-5 freeway and blew out the spare and bent the rim. I was in downtown LA at 2:00 AM. Put the flat original tire on the back and drove on the flat another 30 miles about 45 MPH in the rain and made it home. When I pulled the rim the inside sidewall was threads and steel, but it held together and no damage from the tire. I replaced the mini spare with a Rabbit rim and 155/80 R13 real tire, it fits in the mini spare well perfectly. Second flat was in the assisted living parking lot (around 2012) while picking up my dad to take him to the hospital for his radiation cancer treatment, changed it in the parking lot. I always carry a tire plug kit and compressor as well.
I just replaced the spare on my 2000 Golf…during routine checkout, I was trying to verify the air pressure in the spare, there wasn’t any. Since the valve points downward on the spare below the cargo area in the hatch, it is a bit of a pain to check (better if trunk is mostly empty of course)…at first I thought my air gauge was defective, but it worked OK on one of my regular tires..so tried to pump up the spare and hear hissing noise coming from the valve ….rubber near the base had started to leak….I found out that none of the major tire places will touch a spare that old without replacing it (not just the valve)….guess even spare goes bad due to age, and rubber of course deteriorates rapidly in the sunbelt where I live.
My Golf still has full-sized regular spare, but on a steel rim (vs Alloy for the others….guess that’s why I don’t rotate the spare…..maybe I should have bought a 5th alloy wheel so I could include it in the rotation. I’m a fan of spare tires, and wondering what I’ll do on next car which is libel not to have a spare.
Probably the first car repair I ever did on my own was to replace the spare tire on my Dad’s car when it got a flat in the hospital parking lot…we were visiting him in the hospital (funny thing, he had back problems 43 years ago and never had symptoms again…he passed away last year)…it was a big deal to me at the time, and I like to try to be independent, not reliant on waiting for service to come out or worse, having to have the car towed due to a flat.
Ha ha….great topic! It was a couple of years back, where I’d realized that I could not honestly remember ever driving and needing a spare tire, after almost two decades. I’ve taken the spare tire and jack out of my Mustang to remove about 33 lbs of weight, though I have put a can of Fix a Flat in there, as well as a compressor. I did smoke the curb a couple of years ago with my rear tires (315 Nitto’s), but the sidewall had a puncture and no Fix a Flat would remedy that. I’d decided to call a tow truck.
Even in that case, the stark reality is that any mild puncture is going to be slow enough that you can at least use a compressor to fill it to drive to the tire shop. Also, the other reality is that if the tire is on your drive axle, you really need to switch tires so that the spare is on the non-drive axle so that you don’t screw up your transmission. So if that’s the case, it’s either you want to remove and bolt two tires, or just call a tow truck and get it over with. Around here, it’s 40 bucks for a complete 4 tire changeover, and it only makes sense to get the leaky/ problematic tire fixed or outright replaced.
26 March 2017 on my Silverado; before that, in my new 2007 Honda Fit Sport w/ 870 miles! Low afternoon sun, hit a peice of pipe just as I was exiting I-85. Prior to that, wouldhave been in the late 90’s, I had a flat in a 73 Challenger 340, just as I was entering I-20. Since it was FREEZINGLY COLD & WINDY, NASCAR would have been proud of how fast I got that sucker changed!! LOL!! 🙂
As a young man (and broke), I would wait till the last minute to replace tires. Therefore, they would go flat on the smallest sliver of glass or debris.
As I got older and spares turned into doughnuts, tires are changed so often that the last tire I changed my own tire was 25 years ago. However, I still check the pressure on the spare every year.
Also, I noticed that spare tires are an extra cost option on FIAT 500s. Instead, you get some type of Tire Service Kit. A spare would be installed before I left the dealer’s lot.
I had a blowout the night before last in my 2008 Honda Accord, which I’ve had for 10 weeks. I don’t know if the donut spare was properly inflated, but it was by the time the AAA guy got done with it. I spent yesterday getting the blown tire (225/50-17) replaced. Naturally, I wanted it to be identical to the existing tires (Goodyear Assurance).
I called the tire place just after 8 a.m., and they said they could get the tire in by late afternoon. I had a thought. When I got my first car in 1971, wheels were 13″, 14″ or 15″, tires were 78- or 70-series, and that was that. Tires come in too many sizes these days!