"TEMPORARY USE ONLY"
To Firestone, this means "do not keep more than 14 years, even if you never use it.




The trunk on my Caddy is possesed.

First it used to fill up with water when it rained. Fixed that (I think).

Later I tried to check the spare's air and the nut and bolt holding the top cover board was rusted in place due to water leak. 40" long bolt cutters eventually cut the bolt off.

Trunk pull-down motor died soonafter. Removed that and now I have to slam the trunk to close it.

Go to check air in the spare yesterday, spare tire tread is split like tree bark. Maybe they used the wrong part of the rubber tree.......
Looks like I need to make a trip out to the "Yarde de Junque"...

Geez. I will be needing that Vista Cruiser sooner than I thought.

 

Holy geez Rob, that's not cool, Maybe throw an SSIII rim in your trunk and call it a day :P

 

I had to use that heinous thing on the wagon a few weeks back when the tires got slashed. I had used it once before and didn't like it, but this time I was a nervous wreck driving the car the 4 miles to the tire shop. Car just did not feel right with it on the front. It is original to the car- 1978 vintage.

I had intended to put the snowtires on for that trip, but found one of those had split the sidewall so it was useless. Those are close to 20 years old too I expect. So- two tires slashed, one snowtire on the rear, the space-saver on the front, and off I go to the tire store- only to find the 225/75R15 passenger car tires for it that had to be special ordered because they were a non-stocked size, had been sold to another customer the day before by a different salesman. That blunder did get me a free alignment after I laid into the store manager.

If the punks who slashed all those tires that night intended to cause the neighborhood a lot of unnecessary aggravation and expense, they sure succeeded. Set me back a grand for tires on 2 vehicles, and one guy had just put a set of big Michelins on a Dodge truck that Thursday. Two of 'em got slashed the next Saturday. I think his insurance paid for one of them with the deductible he had. I didn't even bother as I haven't had comp on the wagon in years.

 

I used to have a low-mileage green '73 Bonneville coupe & had replaced the original spare with a decent looking used full sized rim/tire (original spare was kept of course) & while I was driving around one day, I heard an explosion from the back of the car...it scared the heck out of me.

There seemed to be no damage but when I opened the trunk, that spare tire had committed suicide -- I don't know how it didn't blow out my rear speakers or damage the car because the steel belts completely split open at one end; you could stick your whole arm in the tire.

I'll never know why or how it happened...I didn't hit any bumps, it wasn't real hot out or anything! You'd think it would have blown just the sidewall out but nope. Oh well.

 

Just last month I bought four NEW "El Dorado Golden Fury"s (Cooper-made off-brand — it's tough to find whitewalls in our size category at decent prices these days).
Less than a week (and about 15 miles) after I got them, I was working under the front of the car when I heard a sudden LOUD HISSSSSSSS (no band of demons, though...).
It was loud enough that I jumped up out of there FAST and ran around looking for the source. I was able to follow the sound to the left rear tire, which, I discovered, had a baseball-sized bubble in the sidewall, which extended to the bead, which was just unhinged from the tire. I pulled the wheel and checked it out, and sure enough, the bead laid down when the air was out, but as soon as I put even a little air in, the bead just pulled off the rim.

I took it back and it was replaced without hesitation the following day (after the replacement came in), but, damn, it did that just sitting still.

Would've been loads of fun if it'd happened at 70mph.

- Eric

 

Sounds like a "zipper" where one of the steel cords gets old/damaged/corroded or has a defect and eventually snaps. When one of the cords snaps it can cause a domino effect making cords next to it snap... in the end it makes the sidewall look like an open zipper.

I used to work at a tire retreading shop where one of the guys had that happen while he was installing a semi-truck tire. It literally sounded like a cannon was fired in the shop! Everyone rushed over to find out what the heck happened... guess it's like a balloon on steroids popping.

For sure he was on pins and needles for the rest of the day.

 

As far as that "pull down" trunk goes, our '90 deVille had it and I thought that was pretty neat. But our '03 DTS doesn't have it - I heard Cadillac stopped doing that because too many little kids were getting there fingers caught in the trunk as it pulled down.

My friend had real ancient front tires on his pick-up and we took a load of scrap metal down the freeway to the recycling place a couple of weeks ago. Made it to the recycler and unloaded just fine, then waited to get paid. Once paid, we came out to leave and the pick-up was sitting kind of funny. The driver side tire gave up the ghost so we put on the spare, which wasn't any spring chicken either. Got home (didn't take the freeway, just stayed on surface streets at 30mph max), looked at the spare and it was starting to come apart, as well as the passenger front tire. My friend surely got his money's worth out of those tires!

They say that some tire places (Les Schwab out west here is an example) won't repair a tire that's over 6 years old now. I think that's overkill, but tires definitely do have a "shelf" life!

Randy C.