Had the not-so pleasant experience of a tire blowout on our cross country road trip earlier in the week. We were traveling to southern New Hampshire for a funeral from our home in northern Kentucky. Our route was I-71 from Louisville to Cleveland area, then on I-90 up through Erie, PA, then took I-86 east through upstate New York (the interstate that is south of I-90; I-90 is the toll road that costs a fortune and forces you to stop at pre-determined super expensive rest stops so I avoid it like the plague [end rant]). I-86 takes you 2/3 of the way through NY, then it's I-88 to Albany, then cross Vermont through state highways.
My wife and I take turns driving through the night, so one of us gets rest while the other drives. Trip would normally take about 16 hours. About a half hour east of Jamestown, NY (in the middle of nowhere, for those not familiar with I-86, a pretty desolate interstate) my wife wakes me up, and sort of calmly tells me that she hit something in the road. Her voice is drowned out by a loud THUMP-THUMP-THUMP and chimes coming from the instrument panel. Look over and the TPMS is reading 0 PSI on the passenger rear, and all the ABS related idiot lights are lit up like a Christmas tree. It's 4:00am and pitch black. I get out to assess the situation, clearly the tire is flat, but I was surprised to see the rim squashed in a couple places-- yep this isn't going to be a quick fix. Sounds crazy, but whatever she ran over got a REAR tire and missed the fronts entirely.
Before leaving, I hadn't checked the spare so condition was unknown, and vehicle is rather new to us. I've driven cross country literally dozens and dozens of time, and this is my first experience of the sort, so I was never in the habit of checking spare before leaving. I've had cars that didn't even have a spare so don't normally think anything of it. Luckily the spare had never been driven on, low on air, but enough to limp to a service station and top it up to the required 60 PSI. Naturally it was frozen to the bottom of the car, and required breaking the spare tire mount to remove. Out of necessity (nothing open and certainly no decent size town that would have a rim, we drove on the spare doing 55 for a couple hours, checking its condition periodically until we got to Binghamton, the first town that might possibly have a replacement rim. Luckily we found an auto recycler there, and picked up a used Pacifica rim & tire. The rim didn't match, it was 17" instead of 19" but the offset and bolt pattern were identical. Had to use a tire size calculator to find the appropriate size tire to make the circumference as close as possible to the originals. Cost $100 for both the rim, and a near-brand new P245/65/R17 Michelin Latitude Tour.
Long story short, after about a 5 hour delay we were back on the road and made it to NH and back no problems. Wife still doesn't know what she hit, I even went back to the scene after we put the spare on, and didn't locate anything on or beside the road that could have caused this, so it's a mystery what the road debris was. Wife handled the situation perfectly, didn't do any crazy maneuvers or slam on the brakes, which would be a natural reaction when you're about to hit something in the road. Car itself seems no worse for the wear, but with an impact that large, I'm going to take it into an alignment shop and get it checked out. ABS lights corrected themselves, I think the difference in wheel speed rolling on a flat tire set a fault code. Pretty wild ride, I was [censored] at the time, but grateful that only an inconvenience and a $400 rim/tire combo I have to replace is all I'm out.
My wife and I take turns driving through the night, so one of us gets rest while the other drives. Trip would normally take about 16 hours. About a half hour east of Jamestown, NY (in the middle of nowhere, for those not familiar with I-86, a pretty desolate interstate) my wife wakes me up, and sort of calmly tells me that she hit something in the road. Her voice is drowned out by a loud THUMP-THUMP-THUMP and chimes coming from the instrument panel. Look over and the TPMS is reading 0 PSI on the passenger rear, and all the ABS related idiot lights are lit up like a Christmas tree. It's 4:00am and pitch black. I get out to assess the situation, clearly the tire is flat, but I was surprised to see the rim squashed in a couple places-- yep this isn't going to be a quick fix. Sounds crazy, but whatever she ran over got a REAR tire and missed the fronts entirely.
Before leaving, I hadn't checked the spare so condition was unknown, and vehicle is rather new to us. I've driven cross country literally dozens and dozens of time, and this is my first experience of the sort, so I was never in the habit of checking spare before leaving. I've had cars that didn't even have a spare so don't normally think anything of it. Luckily the spare had never been driven on, low on air, but enough to limp to a service station and top it up to the required 60 PSI. Naturally it was frozen to the bottom of the car, and required breaking the spare tire mount to remove. Out of necessity (nothing open and certainly no decent size town that would have a rim, we drove on the spare doing 55 for a couple hours, checking its condition periodically until we got to Binghamton, the first town that might possibly have a replacement rim. Luckily we found an auto recycler there, and picked up a used Pacifica rim & tire. The rim didn't match, it was 17" instead of 19" but the offset and bolt pattern were identical. Had to use a tire size calculator to find the appropriate size tire to make the circumference as close as possible to the originals. Cost $100 for both the rim, and a near-brand new P245/65/R17 Michelin Latitude Tour.
Long story short, after about a 5 hour delay we were back on the road and made it to NH and back no problems. Wife still doesn't know what she hit, I even went back to the scene after we put the spare on, and didn't locate anything on or beside the road that could have caused this, so it's a mystery what the road debris was. Wife handled the situation perfectly, didn't do any crazy maneuvers or slam on the brakes, which would be a natural reaction when you're about to hit something in the road. Car itself seems no worse for the wear, but with an impact that large, I'm going to take it into an alignment shop and get it checked out. ABS lights corrected themselves, I think the difference in wheel speed rolling on a flat tire set a fault code. Pretty wild ride, I was [censored] at the time, but grateful that only an inconvenience and a $400 rim/tire combo I have to replace is all I'm out.
