claydoctor
New member
If you have not familiarized yourself with how the spare tire and jack system works, you might take the time to do so or you may repeat my experience. I have a 2006 Sport with 4500 miles on it. Last week my wife and I left for a 2 day vacation. A half hour into the trip, on one of the busiest sections of I-95 North/South, as it went through a busy metropolitan area, I picked up a nail and blew the driver's side rear tire. Interestingly, I never felt anything in the steering wheel or the seat of my pants, just this noise getting louder and louder.
I pull over and the shoulder is about 10 feet wide between the guard rail and the right hand lane. On the other side of the guard rail is a snow covered ravine and then an 8 ft high fence. So I'm looking at this flat tire which is only 5-6 feet away from cars coming by at 70 MPH or better. Did I mention it was about 35 degrees. My mind is racing, the nearest exit is a mile away. I called my insurance company, as I thought I remembered, they had 24 hour roadside assistance and start listening to the voice prompts, I get to the one about "if you are in a dangerous area or need the police, press 1" I do that and then I'm on hold for a good 5-10 minutes because of "an unusually heavy call volume" so much for being in a dangerous area. I remember Dangerfield's line, "I don't get no respect. I called suicide prevention and they put me on hold". So anyhow, they say they will send a tow truck to change the tire. It will arrive "within an hour". I might have thought about changing it myself had the tire been on the inboard side but no way I'm gonna grapple with that thing 6 feet from 70 MPH traffic. It took 45 minutes for help to come during which time I read the manual about how to assemble all the gear to winch down the spare. It's not rocket science but it's not the kinda thing you want to learn about under stress. You have to aasemble all the rods a certain way to form a handle to get at the spare. The pictures in the owner's manual are of marginal help. I still don't know how to get the jack out.
So if you've never done it before, you might want to do a dry run when you're not dealing with a nervous wife and you don't have in the back of your mind how many troopers have been killed when someone plowed into the back of their patrol car stopped on the shoulder- and they had flashing blue lights! I also now have my insurance company's emergency number on my dashboard. Merry Christmas.
I pull over and the shoulder is about 10 feet wide between the guard rail and the right hand lane. On the other side of the guard rail is a snow covered ravine and then an 8 ft high fence. So I'm looking at this flat tire which is only 5-6 feet away from cars coming by at 70 MPH or better. Did I mention it was about 35 degrees. My mind is racing, the nearest exit is a mile away. I called my insurance company, as I thought I remembered, they had 24 hour roadside assistance and start listening to the voice prompts, I get to the one about "if you are in a dangerous area or need the police, press 1" I do that and then I'm on hold for a good 5-10 minutes because of "an unusually heavy call volume" so much for being in a dangerous area. I remember Dangerfield's line, "I don't get no respect. I called suicide prevention and they put me on hold". So anyhow, they say they will send a tow truck to change the tire. It will arrive "within an hour". I might have thought about changing it myself had the tire been on the inboard side but no way I'm gonna grapple with that thing 6 feet from 70 MPH traffic. It took 45 minutes for help to come during which time I read the manual about how to assemble all the gear to winch down the spare. It's not rocket science but it's not the kinda thing you want to learn about under stress. You have to aasemble all the rods a certain way to form a handle to get at the spare. The pictures in the owner's manual are of marginal help. I still don't know how to get the jack out.
So if you've never done it before, you might want to do a dry run when you're not dealing with a nervous wife and you don't have in the back of your mind how many troopers have been killed when someone plowed into the back of their patrol car stopped on the shoulder- and they had flashing blue lights! I also now have my insurance company's emergency number on my dashboard. Merry Christmas.
