Bolt 1 Tire 0

So this happened. I took a bolt to the side of my my drivers-side rear tire while on my way to the River the other day. Thankfully my truck was basically empty; no trailer, no bike, nothing other than me and a duffel bag of clothes and an ice chest. Unfortunately it happened in a highway construction zone where there was no shoulder and traffic slowed from 70-80 to 30. I was able to limp into a construction entrance where I changed the tire and was back on the road in 30 minutes. The tire still had a couple of PSI when I parked so the wheel never scrapped the ground.

I was able to get a replacement tire in Palm Springs. The guy at the tire store said these Wrangler's are generally pretty tough tires, although the sidewall's are not reinforced with Kevlar, just the tread. I do a fair amount of four-wheeling with this truck so when the other three tires, I'll be upgrading to something else.

So what has everyone else found in their tires?

Here are some pics:

 

Air??

 

I popped one of those wranglers In the desert in AZ with some metal shrapnel that blended into the rocks while out wheeling. The damn tire aired down on about 30 seconds and I had to change the tire at the bottom of the slope in some sand. Put the spare on and made it to discount. Turns out the piece of metal pierced straight through and cut some of the metal reinforcement band in the tire.

 

Brutal, glad you got it sorted out.

This speaks to the availability side of tire purchasing, you dont want a rare tire thats hard to replace in case of these scenarios.

BFG's can suck, but you can almost find them at local 7-11's

 

Free pliers!

 

Glad you were able to make it off the highway and somewhere safe with drivers this day and age and also willing to take the chance to make it to a safe place and not just stop in the highway. I know sometimes you have to but it’s best to ride it out

 

Willing to ship.

JK, that’s definitely not good either, and I definitely have been there before. Somehow a use to be nice SOG multi tool must have fell out of a truck and my tire chewed it up.

 

Not mine but found a screw driver sticking out of a tire, the pointy end out. I don’t know how it ended up in there. Sold the customer a new tire obviously.

 

I ditched the stock wranglers because they aren’t very tough.

 

Its only flat on one side, just make sure you only drive on the round part

 

That's why the rims are round, right?

 

Ouch! Mine was the same way; it started dropping air fast! I was watching it on the dash and watching traffic slowing down hoping this wasn't going to cost me a new wheel too!

 

Nice! Looks to be in almost the same place on the sidewall as mine was!

 

Why were you doing you laundry down by the river anyway?

 

Thanks! Right away I decided that stopping in traffic wasn't going to happen; even if I'd had to ruin the wheel to do it I was going to get at least onto the shoulder.

I agree about BFG's being a lot easier to find. I run BFG A/T's on my Silverado and my VW Thing and will probably run them on my Taco too when it's ready for new tires. Once I got to Palm Springs I called around to three chain tire stores. Of those three only one could get a replacement tire by the next day (Saturday); the others couldn't have one until Monday. All were within $10 of the same price.

I do like that the spare on these trucks matche the tires which are on the truck. My Plan B had I not been able to source a replacement Wrangler A/T was to have the bad tire removed, the spare installed on it's wheel then having a used tire mounted on my spare wheel. I wasn't interested in continuing my trip without a spare.

 

LOL No laundry this trip! I ended-up just staying in Palm Springs for the weekend, doing some four-wheeling and getting chased around by Thunderstorms.

 

Frankenstire

 

Good one! My GF wanted me to save the tire with the bolt sticking-out of it and mount it on the wall in my garage. I chose not to do that, but I did save the bolt. It'll join the fragged Reverse gear from a VW Trans I broke a while ago which hangs from a rafter above my workbench.

 

I had a piece of glass puncture one of my brand new BFGoodrich KO2s a couple months ago. Not sure how or why