Spare tyres and maximum speed limits

[The Nomad]

Snip

This is I believe to be true ... and may well be why a steel rim with alloy style nuts/studs is speed limited.

Avpx

[Robin]

Odd - or, rather, /not/ an odd spare.

Only other thought I can offer is a variation on John's "we sticker space savers and others". It'd make sense to sticker them if they supply the same spare both for cars with the same size (like yours) and for other models with different in tyre and/or wheel. But I can't recall what make/model it is.

[Chris Bartram]

That certainly is a thing- bolts for alloys can be different lengths and have a different shoulder, but I've been told the steel spare wheels will have a hole shaped to suit the bolts that come with the alloys, assuming the alloys are OE- and anyway, I presume your van has all steels (or was this not your van?)

[ARW]

It's not my works van. It's my car (Skoda Octavia estate) that I bought this Christmas.

[ARW]

Is your email valid?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Could be. Alloys normally have a flat face. Steel, often a taper.

[ARW]

As we can forget space saving (it's a full sized tyre) then the only other options are

1. The spare has a smaller rim. That would make no sense as it is a full sized tyre.

1. Tyre bolts (as per your suggestion)
2. The sticker is just there.

4 And not related to the puncture. Does anyone on this Newsgroup know how to correctly speak the word Skoda? (the S on Skoda has a small Caron above it)

[Tim+]

Yes. Imagine how Sean Connery would say it. That's the way. (Same as in "Sean" as it happens). ;-)

Tim

[Andy Burns]

[F]

We left the road on a gentle uphill bend a few years ago. I've driven that road for many years, I know it well, and we were not going any faster than normal. Thankfully, the sideways swipe on the kerb meant we were kept out of the wall.

Just across the pavement was an oil filter and a few other bits and pieces from what appeared to be an earlier heavy accident. With the light in the right direction, we could see there was also a faint oil sheen on the road.

A letter to the council, accompanied by a couple of photographs of the road surface and the debris, got us a couple of new alloys to replace those that had hit the kerb and been badly marked up, along with a suspension geometry check and an admission that they had cleaned up from an earlier accident but hadn't done it well enough.

You might want to have a go at claiming for a new tyre...

[Steve Walker]

Yes. Only just got round to my emails and replied - I've been finishing of my hall ceiling replacement, so haven't checked them 'til now.

SteveW

[Tim Watts]

Is there anyone in the world who actually does that?

Not doubting the recommendation - but I've never been told it :)

[Steve Walker]

Another model may use a different size on, say, a 17" wheel and use your size with a 16" wheel as the spare. It then becomes simpler to mark all spares with the reduced speed limit, so they don't have to be careful which car they end up with during production or if they supply later.

I know for my car (Zafira B) that some models use 17" or 18" wheels, but only carry a 16" spare, which would require marking and I think that all the 16" steel spare wheels come with a 50mph marking and it is probably true of any vauxhall with the same spare wheel. As mine uses 16" wheels all round, the limit would not actually be required.

Mine came without a spare, so I bought the carrier and a second-hand, matching alloy wheel and had a new tyre fitted - so if I need to use the spare, I can carry on my journey as normal, get the tyre repaired/replaced as soon as possible and then just put it back in the carrier without rushing to change again.

SteveW

[Chris Bartram]

Ah, so there's a Skoda theme here :-)

[Dave Liquorice]

Most people don't have the basic knowledge of how a nut and spanner works let alone use a jack in the right place or centralise each nut/bolt and tighten evenly in an "across center" pattern. Possibly the biggest reason is they'd get their hands dirty.

As for method, yes, but loosen *all* the bolts/nuts half a turn on the required wheel before jacking the car up. B-)

[Dave Liquorice]

Rural, can't honestly remember when the last puncture I had was, it's that long ago, somewhere around 10 years. Other half called me out about 5 years ago with a flat.

Nearside front wheel bearings seem to take a hammering though...

[NY]

Yes, it's not "cool" to be mechanically proficient any more. Many people seem to regard not being able to do *simple* maintenance on a car as a positive virtue. By "simple" I mean even things like checking oil, coolant and windscreen washer levels and tyre pressures / tread depths periodically, and checking for leaves blocking the drain holes on the sill at the base of the windscreen. I mention the windscreen drain because I once fell foul of this: I got into my car one morning in autumn after a heavy night's rain, and my feet were paddling in water. The ducts which drain the water that runs off the windscreen into the sill where the windscreen wipers come from had got blocked with leaves and the water couldn't drain away so it had overflowed down the back of the bulkhead into the car. That was a nice "little" job removing the centre gear lever console and the front seats to get all the carpets up to wash them and dry them out. For a couple of days I was running around with no carpets or underlay (a lot more road noise!) and no passenger seat. I always check the drain holes now when there are leaves falling.

Yes I meant to say that you loosen *all* the nuts half a turn before jacking up. The main thing is, don't try to exert a lot of force on the nuts when the wheel is in the air and therefore free to rotate if the brakes or transmission won't stop it turning. I've never had to change front wheel on a rear wheel drive car (I've never owned one) but those wheels are completely unbraked when they are raised unless you've got someone to press the footbrake for you. I *think* all my cars have been new enough to have bolts that you remove, rather than nuts that engage with captive bolts that remain attached to the hub. I imagine it's a little bit harder to locate the wheel onto four captive bolts than to locate it only onto the central boss and then be able to rotate it until the bolt holes are lined up with the wheel.

Have you ever *lost* a spare wheel? I did once on my first Pug 306 which had the spare in a cage under the floor. I was driving down a country lane when I heard a grating sound which was the cage rubbing on the road. I drove back slowly to look for the wheel, but I never found it, so maybe it fell out further back than I drove, though when I hadn't found it after half a mile I parked up and walked forwards again to the place when I noticed it had gone, in case it had rolled into a ditch. So that needed a trip to Quickfit to buy a new steel wheel and tyre. I'd been driving for maybe a half an hour before I noticed it was missing, so it's not as if someone had nicked it while I was stopped and then I noticed a short distance further on. That was in the days of proper serviceable spares that can be used as far and as fast as a real wheel, until it's convenient to take the punctured tyre in for repair, without a puncture turning into a high-priority "must get the fixed NOW before I can continue my journey" emergency. The only time I would call out the RAC is for a puncture on the offside when I'm on a motorway - let the RAC man face the extra danger of being close to traffic, protected by the flashing lights on his van. So far in 40 years driving, I've never had a puncture while I've been driving (apart from the blow-out when the tyre scraped against the edge of the tarmac when I was forced off the road by an oncoming tractor) - all my punctures have been of the sort where the car is fine when I park, and then the tyre is flat when I come to drive away: very slow pi

[Roger Hayter]

Some would say that you should take part of the weight off the wheel by jacking it up a bit before loosening the nuts at all, partly to make it easier and partly to avoid bending forces on the edge of the hole in the wheel.

As far as wheel studs are concerned, in some ways it is easier to put a heavy wheel on studs, as it stays in the right place even if slightly skewed or not fully on.

[Rob Morley]

But stuck in a cage under the back, with the retaining screw rusted solid ...

[NY]

Yes, that was not Peugeot's finest bit of design. If the head of the long retaining bolt had been hexagonal, the same size as the wheel nuts (so the same wheelbrace can be used) I would have been able to exert some serious force and worked the seized threads loose without too much problem, especially with the application of some WD40 which I even had in the car with me. But when the bolt has a broad hemi-cylindrical slot, it's damn-near impossible. If they'd used a slot with vertical rather than rounded/sloping sides, it would have been a lot better, because at least the flat end of the wheelbrace wouldn't have been forced out of the slot. But they went and f*cked up the design properly - no half-measures: a 100% award-winning f*ck-up :-( Full marks to the design department - and the testing department which should have picked up that bad design.