Redline - Flat tyre at 800k

[Trevor 062]

There's no give in the tyres side wall with big wheels & small low profile tyres, I'm sure you will be getting a few more over the years.

 

[vc commodore]

You young blokes should have been around when we often got a puncture once a month or more.

Off with the wheel with tyre only flat on the bottom of course, and on with the spare.

Home soon as possible, out with the tyre levers, off with the tyre, out with the tube, repair it with the repair kit, test it in a tub of water to be sure no more leaks, back into the tyre, tyre back on the rim and hand pump it up to pressure.

I reckon it took all of ten minutes.

I still do this to this day...Tubeless tyres, out with the patch, fix the problem and back on the car...no probs

 

[vc commodore]

Punctures occur reguarly....Doesn't matter whether it's a 14" rim or a 24" rim....It's a matter of bad luck......

Wet weather and new tyres seem to be the most susceptial....nice soft rubber, nice object and straight through it goes.

I've pulled screw drivers, spanners and allen keys out of tyres....just to name a few things.....The best was a front blade section from a front end loader bucket out of a tyre.....The driver of the truck said it lifted the back of his truck off the ground, when it went in.

 

[gazpep]

I had a spate of them a few years back in my last vehicle. We had moved into a new estate and there was a lot of houses being built in the area, tradesmen all over the place and I must have picked up 4 or 5 punctures due to nails and screws going through the treads. Bloody nuisance running around to get them fixed, a couple actually ruined the tyres.

 

[panhead]

As many have said a puncture is the luck of the draw and not the fault of the tyre size or profile.

20 inch tyres are such common place these days the manufacturers would have made allowances for low profile walls to be strengthened to ensure they survive most driving requirements.

You’re more likely to bend or crack a cheap rim than damage the tyre.

I’ve been running 20’s for 10 years and currently have them on a number of cars and have not had a single puncture or tyre go flat and I put that down to luck.

I have recently had an 18 inch tyre on my BMW lose pressure due to a faulty valve, a nail in a 15 inch tyre on my Torana that required a plug and I did crack two cheap 18 inch Chinese rims on my VS Clubsport a couple of years back when the grate from a drain had been washed away during a storm on the M4 in Sydney and I put them all down to bad luck.

I do run low profiles as you can see in the photos below, these are 285/25R20 on my Merc and I’ve had these for 6 years without a hassle.

I admit I live in an urban area being the NSW Central Coast but the roads are far from perfect and I do visit my family in far North West NSW a couple of times a year and the roads in some places are a shocker and the 20’s still work well.

One thing my tyre fitter has always told me which is contrary to what I often read and that is your rims will have a better chance of survival if you decrease the tyre pressure to allow the tyre wall to flex instead of sending the shock into the rim and possibly damaging it.

I’ve followed this advice for years and hit the occasional pothole and had the rims survive.