feets

I was headed to work on a balmy 18 degree Wednesday morning when the left rear tire went down. It turns out that the POS Pirelli Pzero ate a screw, leaked down, and tore the sidewall off the inside of the tire. I had the pleasure of installing the minispare on the side of a busy freeway only to find out that the compressor wasn't in the car. A call to my retired parents who lived 10 miles away landed a compressor to get it back on the road..
Seeing that my vacation started the next day I bought a Michelin Pilot Sport AS3+ from a competing dealership (we didn't have one and couldn't get one that day) and got my car up and running again. We had a compressor in stock and the local MB parts depot had the can-o-goo that was also missing.

Two friends and I left Dallas on Friday morning. We were headed to Corpus Christi for a hart hat tour of the USS Lexington aircraft carrier. We went down to Waco on I-35 then took to the two lane blacktops to see a little bit of Texas and avoid the traffic disaster that is Austin and the areas to the north. We were slowing for a stop sign when I heard a strange grinding/groaning sound. I cleared the intersection and hit a nearby gravel parking lot to check it out. The 2 day old left rear tire was almost flat In fact, it finished deflating as we watched. It aired back up fine and we could hear a faint hiss. Upon deeper inspection we found a crack on the inside lip of the wheel.

Once more, I drug out the spare and got it mounted as one of the other guys called around to find a suitable wheel. Being in VERY rural Texas (we were in a volunteer fire department parking lot) the chances were slim of finding anything close. After chasing a string of referrals we found a guy who had a few junk 203 cars. He was 73 miles away. We limped it on over there at a reduced minispare speed and dug through his junk yard. The best deal we could find was a well worn 17" five spoke sport wheel with a like-new Primewell (ick!) tire. The wheel has more than it's share of curb rash and only a couple spots of the original finish left on it. The guy wanted $135 for it but I talked him down to $100 cash. We flopped the wide side of the back seat, shoved the original wheel/tire forward, kinda barely got the second wheel/tire in the there, and packed our bags in around it. There was a Discount Tire a few miles away (now that we were back in civilization) so we headed over there to have the new treasure inspected.

The replacement wheel and tire held air when tanked and balanced properly so we hooptified my C55 with the ghetto wheel and got back on the road.

Luckily, we had planned some down time on Friday evening and that gave us the buffer we needed to fit the 2 hour tire ordeal into our schedule. Other than some crap weather the rest of the trip went off without a hitch. We're home again and the hooptified C55 gets to cruise as-is for the entirety of this week due to my scheduled vacation and I'll see if our wheel guys can effect repairs when I get back to the dealership.

kbob999

Small disasters make for good stories. I've got a few stories like that too, and one reason I always like to carry a spare. 2 of my cars were not equipped with spares!
Thanks for sharing, hope your vacation went well.