Thread: Useless Spare Wheel

These stupid spares ruled out half the vehicles we were considering buying.
In the end, the first question we asked was " does it have a correct full size spare"
Some salesman were incredulous, boasting roadside assist, blah blah. One even insisted on an arguement about the chances of needing the spare.

Originally Posted by crash

In a lot of vehicles the wheel well for the space saver is smaller than the fitted road tyres. So imagine you are a family of four on a road trip with the back / boot filled with luggage and you get a flat. Where are you going to put the flat tyre?
Only used a space saver once - pain in the back side!
Space savers are not recommended to be used on the drive wheels, so you may have to end up swapping 3 tyres around - e.g. if getting a front flat on a FWD vehicle - take off flat tyre and replace with space saver, then move to the back take good tyre off, put flat on, then take rear tyre to front to swap with space saver, then take the flat off of the rear and put the space saver onto the rear - sounds like fun to me!
In my opinion a good quality plug kit and a decent compressor is a better option than a space saver.

Sounds like the Irish way of doing it to me.

Why wouldn't you simply remove one of the rear wheels and replace with your space saver spare, and then remove the flat tyre from the front of the vehicle and replace it with the inflated tyre you have just removed from the rear.

Originally Posted by BMKal

Sounds like the Irish way of doing it to me.

Why wouldn't you simply remove one of the rear wheels and replace with your space saver spare, and then remove the flat tyre from the front of the vehicle and replace it with the inflated tyre you have just removed from the rear.

I was over complicating things wasn't I.

I wonder what it would be like to drive on four of those space savers spares?

Most of the space saver spares on the smaller cars are motor bike tyres....

Those things are also supposed to inflated to 60 psi......but no one ever checks them.....so by the time you need to use it.....it's got less than half its required pressure.......

As stated previously.....they are only good for suburbia......barely....