Hello,

Recently whilst driving to work, I noticed
my car was pulling slightly to the left.

It got me there no problem, although did
stall a few times which was strange.

A colleague told me at lunchtime my tire
was flat. I came out and it was as flat as a pancake. I put on the spare and
took it down to my local garage that evening. The garage pumped it up but could
find no hole after they poured water all over the tire. They took it away and
took the rubber from the wheel, then called me over and showed me inside of the
wheel. There was a pile of flakey rubber pieces. They said that where I had
been driving the wheel on flat, the inside had come away. Although the inside
tire wall seemed well in tacked to me but I had never seen these flakey pieces before.

Does any one know if this is what happens? For
all I know, they could have put it in there?

The end result was a tire with lots of
tread went in the bin and I had to pay £132 for another new one.

I've ruined a tyre before by driving 3 miles with it flat so it can be done. If there's a small amount of damage to the wall it's always best to replace. So the garage may have been right, if it ever happens again try and watch them taking the tyre from the rim so you can see what's going on.

Yes this is definitely what happens, the tyre was past it at that point and the garage did the right thing by replacing it. The tyre may well have looked ok to the eye, but would have been a potential death trap if re fitted.

Hope you got a decent tire put on for that price.

I had a brand new tyre (6 days old) replaced last year because a bike hit my car and snapped off the valve.

I was informed that due to the fact the tyre had suffered a heavy side wall impact that the wire inside was damaged.

I can quite well believe the need to replace a tyre driven while flat for the same sort of damage.

A weakened side wall could fail under high speed load and rip the whole tyre apart.

Better safe than sorry when it comes to the only bit of a car that keeps you stuck to the road.

Thanks for your posts. I just find it hard to believe that the last five times I have had a flat tire, it has never been fixable. And this has been ever since I have had tires worth more than £100 to replace.

I got an Avon ZV5 93W XL for £132.00

It had an Avon on before and two Goodyears on the back. These were what it had when I bought from dealers.

Hopefully I got a good deal, although there was not much choice, I didn't go in prepared, I was hoping I could just get my old one repaired.

This is what the outiside of my old one looked like before it got switched...

Oh god, that's well gone mate. Dangerous, very dangerous. Did the right thing getting it replaced. The garage would have probably refused to refit that anyway, and only put your spare tyre on.

You can clearly see the fold in the side wall.

Definitely a goner.

At least I know. Thanks very much for your help and info.

I had not realised at the time, but I drove about 40 miles on it. It must have been very low. It kept randomly pulling to the left and stalling at traffic. Couldn't work out what it was.

I have had loads of flats before and you know when you have a flat tire, but I have never had one since I had my Focus.

All I can assume is it must have been very low and then lost all of its air once I parked up.