Eddie Arana, Rick Thibodeau, & Chris Bakunas San Diego, Ca. March 2012

Eddie Arana, Rick Thibodeau, & Chris Bakunas San Diego, Ca. March 2012
Eddie Arana, Rick Thibodeau, & Chris Bakunas at Luche Libre Taco Shop in San Diego, March 2012

Monday, March 28, 2016

Why Driving Around With Your Tires Out Of Alignment Is A Bad Idea



This afternoon my front drivers side tire suffered a blow-out. Fortunately I wasn't on the freeway driving at a high rate of speed - it was just as I was pulling out of a parking lot, turning left. I pulled back into the parking lot immediately and proceeded to pulling off the flat and putting on the spare,


This is the area of the tire sidewall where the blowout occurred, I have no idea how it happened - didn't feel like I'd hit or run over anything. However, while the blowout was an annoying inconvenience, it was also a blessing in disguise.


See, when I took the flat tire off the rim I discovered that the tire was wearing down to the steel belts on the inside - the result of the front tires being out of alignment, which I think was the result of me slightly tapping a curb due to a hard turn I had to make to avoid a sliding car about a month ago. 

As you can probably easily imagine a tire like that was due to give out at any moment. It could have happened on a busy downtown street going 25 mph, a relatively empty residential street going 35 mph, or on a highway going 65 mph. It was just dumb luck that the front tire caught a flat when I was only going 5 mph leaving a parking lot - a dry, snow and ice free parking lot in the middle of a sunny afternoon.


All I had to do was remove the flat, put on the spare, and then get to my local tire shop to get four new tires put on - car's an AWD, so when one tire needs replacing, they all have to be replaced. 

Bummer about having to get four new tires, but damn, a little inconvenience and expense beats the hell out of what could have been a catastrophe.

Oh, and yeah, got the front end alignment taken care of, which I should have done about a month ago...yeah.

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