Had my snow tires put on this weekend.

Monday I go to work, and it feels a little squishy in the front. It's only about a mile and a half (and raining), so I crawl to work, get there, and yep, about 12 pounds down. Bad seal is my thought. Grumble grumble, put the little toy compressor to it. It's good. Good that evening. Good last night. Good this morning.

Get out of work, utterly flat.

Put the compressor to it. Nothing.

Try to goop it. Nothing.

Grumble, grumble, cuss, cuss. Get the donut out of the trunk. Get the jack and the tire iron. Swap it out.

Found the problem- the head of a square nail is deep between the treads. *sighs* They were brand new last winter. And an antique, hand forged nail that has been minding it's own business for over a century ruins my day.

Headlamp and McFeely's Pocket Wrench from the EDC helped out.

Tomorrow night I'll try to get it repaired. *sighs*

That was my excitement for the day. Ready for everything short of a nuclear exchange with what is in my car. Glad I was ready for this or I'd never be able to live it down.

What, no patch kit in the car? *ducks and runs*

Could have been worse. Try changing a tire while wearing a dress, in the rain.

It's okay, you did good.

Sue

If I do, I'm sure not gonna be telling people about it.

Sue, in a dress would be better than the last time I had to change a tire. Spare, check. Tire iron, check. Jack, check. Jack handle... jack handle... *cussstomprantravecusscussstompkick*

*in much smaller voice* Cell phone, check. "Triple-A? Yeah, I'm on I-89 just past mile marker...."

Sorry Sue,
If I were to do that the tire and the rain would be the least of my worries.

I'm thinking step one has to be get out of the dress - at least I know that would my first step, spares the dress and the reputation. Step two is change the tire and step three is start worrying about how I got into a dress in the first place.

- Eric

IronRaven...ever consider reforging that antique nail into something else like a small flint striker or something or a small scraper for your ferro rod. Since it found you, kinda sorta, might as well use it for something. Or keep it as a nail.

I dropped it off to get it patched tonight. I did actually ask them to save that sucker.

My one souvenir from 9/11 is a long sliver of metal I found stuck in my boot sole. One of my co-workers found a key labeled "WTC Do Not Duplicate."

Jeff

Working in construction I learned to keep a plug kit in my vehicles. I used to get nails in my tires so often it wasn't even worth it to switch to a spare. I would just plug them and keep on truckin'.


(Disclaimer: A plug is technically only a temporary fix, as tires are supposed to be both plugged and patched for a proper permanent fix. However, I never had a problem with tires that were just plugged, especially since I don't usually get more than 30,000 miles out of a set of tires.)

I do the plug kit also, although the last couple didn't hold, and kept developing slow leaks. I forgot to use glue...

Yeah, these were new last winter and weren't run this summer. So they are still worth quite a bit. I'm getting them patched properly. :P

Hmm, even in this day and age, I gotta think a woman in a dress ought not have such a hard go of it getting her flat tire replaced. There's at least one person in this world I know of that would still stop to lend a lady a hand. I am guessing I would find a whole bunch more here on this forum just by asking.

That said, I expect my girls to all know how to take care of such things themselves. One shouldn't have to rely on the goodwill of others too much.

I've stopped. I admit it, I was raised to be chivalrous. And I curse a society where a man carrying pistol and sword is seen as a menace rather than just a well dressed man.

On the original thread, ahhhh... It feels good to have that donut off there. Four nice, full sized, grippy tires. It only looked like an antique nail- it was a sliver of cast metal, it was too light to be iron but it was black. Random debris. FOD sucks, especially when it isn't even something cool.