Thread: Useless Spare Wheel

My daughter has a little Suzuki Swift Sport thing and it does not have a spare at all. There is a repair/inflation kit in the boot instead.

Hi,
A lack of spare tyre would have been a show stopper for us with any car purchase.
Cheers

Originally Posted by Fatso

An older lady down the road in our rural area had to put her skinny new type spare 80Kmh wheel after a flat .
Then had to set off down a rural 110Kmh road ( Indian Ocean Drive ) to the metro area , she said it was a nightmare as she was tailgated , honked and headlight flashed at , then when drivers overtook sometimes on double lines she got the finger .
Imho these pieces of crap are a bloody safety hazard and should not be allowed for Australian cars , and of course some consideration from some drivers may help as well .

Maybe she should have had her hazard lights on, does not excuse bad behaviour from other drivers though.

So only for city driving, if traveling afar it seems you need to buy a full size tyre

Originally Posted by pop058

My daughter has a little Suzuki Swift Sport thing and it does not have a spare at all. There is a repair/inflation kit in the boot instead.

2010 ford fiesta was the same. Altho a full sized spare did fit.

Current Subaru has a pretend spare - had to use it the other week too. Painful experience, already late for work as it takes a few minutes to pull over to change, made worse by the fact now limited to 80kph, a little hair raising on the hume freeway to boot.

When it went in for service I asked the dealer if a full sized spare would fit in the compartment as i didnt have time and just piffed the flat in the boot, all they were interested in was losing a few mm of boot space.

Totally agree with OP. Unroadworthy!

Sent from my SM-G800F using AULRO mobile app

Exactly the reason I bought a Passat vs other options.

Originally Posted by Ausfree

Maybe she should have had her hazard lights on, does not excuse bad behaviour from other drivers though.

Hazard lights while driving is generally illegal, but probably a good idea in this case

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.