Not Again!

Yes, again. I can't believe it. For the fourth time in as many months, we've had tire trouble. But this time, it was on the Mustang. Thursday morning, as I was driving south on 67th Ave, I heard a slight flapping noise coming from the right side of the car. I must have hit some litter and the car is now dragging it. After all, Phoenix is legendary for its road trash...and it's happened to me before.

So I pulled off the road into a church parking lot. I got out and walked to the other side of the car. No road trash here. No cardboard boxes, no plastic grocery bags, no carpet scraps. Nothing.

I looked closer. The front-right tire had little silver threads sticking out of the edges. The tire is coming apart at the seams.

I called Quinton. Unfortunately, he had already gotten to work, but all I needed was advice anyway: should I have the car towed or drive it one mile to the shop. Since I'm too cheap to pay a tow bill, Q told me what I wanted to hear: "Drive it to Fletcher's...just keep it under 35". That shouldn't be a problem since it's still rush hour.

I limped the car up the street to the tire place. The manager came out and looked at my car. The two left tires were almost as bad as the one in the front. And the right-rear tire wasn't too far behind. I needed a whole new set of tires.

I knew these were "z-rated" high-performance tires, which typically didn't have a long life, but come on! These tires had less than 20,000 miles on them!

Anyway, the manager recommended an "h-rated" tire. These perform well at high speeds, but they aren't a racing tire. Fine with me because I don't plan driving 150 mph anyway. In fact, the car merely gets used for errands, commuting, cruising around town, and the occasional road trip.

Also, these new tires have a longer tread life, but "the tread pattern isn't as fancy" as the our old tires. "I don't care what the tread looks like!" I told the manager. Well, apparently there are people who do.

This ordeal--just like any car trouble--was an inconvenience. For starters, I missed my architectural history class. But in the grand scheme of things, the circumstances under which this happened couldn't have been better. I was able to pull off of the road quickly and safely. I was close to home, and I was even closer to the shop. And the shop manager was nice enough to give me a ride home while they worked on the car.

Also, it's better that this happened to me doing 40 mph on a surface street than Quinton doing 60 mph out on I-17. And I'm really glad it didn't happen two weeks from now when we'll be traveling I-10 between Phoenix and Palm Springs for our anniversary trip.

And speaking of our which, I think I just got a set of new Fuzion HRIs for our anniversary.