Catastrophic Tire Failure
Getting Flat-Bedded out of a Remote Area
Yesterday I went to one of my regular remote, BLM land spots near Angel's Camp, CA. While on the access road to my spot something managed to slice a nice gash in the sidewall of my front driver's side tire. When I exited the car after parking at my spot I immediately heard a loud "whooshing" noise. The ironic part is I must've hit whatever slashed my tire in the last 200yds or so before my spot because all the air came out FAST. Even with the air compressor I bring with me pumping into the tire, the pressure kept dropping. I'm not sure even a run-flat would've stood up to the same damage.
Thankfully I still had some cell phone reception where I was, because most of the area is just dead down in the valley between the mountains. The AAA operator was having trouble figuring out where I was because there's no address and no real area name where I was along this remote access road. I eventually had to have her open up Google Maps, find some landmarks via satellite image, and get GPS coordinates to give the flat bed driver my location.
I was dreading the possibility of waiting 4+hours for a tow truck to make it there, and then on top of that not being able to find a tire place where I could get a new tire to limp the 2hrs home. As luck would have it though, the tow company told me it'd only be an hour and 20min for the driver to get to me, and it would be even shorter if he wasn't working another wreck at the moment. I figured that was optimistic at best, but surprisingly right on time the flat bed arrived!
AAA found a local Chevron that did tires, and they said they'd see if they could squeeze me in, but wasn't sure, so I had the car towed there. When I got there it turned out they weren't terribly busy at all, and just happened to have a tire in the 235/45-18 (same size as my DWS06's) that would work for me. It was a cheap Fuzion tire that they had ordered for a customer to use as a quick temporary tire for a situation similar to mine and were just going to charge me what they paid for it ($85). Later on in casual conversation I mentioned that I had been coming up to the area pretty frequently. The installer asked me if I'd be up there again soon, and I said I would be within the next month. He then told me he was just going to charge me $25 for the tire and asked if I could just return it next time I was in the area. All in all, taking off the damaged tire, getting the new one, and installing it only cost me $45. Boy did I get lucky!
As it turns out, I've been thinking about getting new tires since doing Thunderhill. I guess my time table's been moved up a month, or two, and I'll probably grab some Continental Extremecontact Sports in 245/40-18. I've been looking at those and the new Pilot Sport 4S, but I can get the Conti's for $170 less (enough to buy a fifth one if I wanted!).