Marvin,
I have had too many such stories and it is obvious that new tyres are
needed. So I will use the current old ones while I finish the car (still
lots of jobs to do!) and when it is ready for the road I will take it in
and get a complete set of new tyres !!!!!
Thanks for your dissertation, I think you take the record!!
At 10:13 AM 8/31/04, match@ece.utah.edu wrote:
>Barrie,
>
>Well, here's a story:
>
>A few years ago I bought a '74 Jaguar XJ6. After a few months (new engine)
>I drove it
>from Salt Lake City Utah to Reno Nevada to take my daughter and one of her
>teammates to a gymnastics competition. The tires looked new. Good tread,
>no weather
>checks... I figured everything was fine, and I really liked those tires. I
>learned later that
>my car had been sitting on a lot in Santa Rosa, Calif. for some 7 years
>before I bought
>her, so the tires were at least that old...
>
>The fist tire started to disintegrate about 200 miles into the trip, and
>blew out 30 miles
>later. The spare (which I suspect was one of the cars originals) lasted
>almost long
>enough to get to the next town, but I ended up stranded in the middle of
>the desert.
>
>This was in the middle of the night, naturally... after an hour and a half
>of waving and
>screaming we flagged down a trucker who gave us all a lift into the next
>town. Huge
>towing bill (cash only), a motel for the night, and a new pair of tires on
>front the next
>day, one of the old set as a spare, and we were back on the road, without
>incident...
>until the return trip to Salt Lake.
>
>About 130 miles out of Reno (I realized by then that I really knew better
>than to try to
>drive this far on old tires at freeway speeds, or should have), a third
>tire blew out, so on
>went the spare, which was one of the four that the car had been driving
>on prior, and I
>proceeded with no spare for the rest of the trip.
>
>So I'm cruising along at 75 MPH, completely in love with my car and
>thinking that the
>trip had been a good one in spite of the tire failures (the girls had done
>well at the meet,
>and after all it wasn't the cars fault that it had old rotten tires).
>We're almost home... I
>can see the lights of Salt Lake City in the distance ahead, about 75 miles
>to go, when
>the engine fan threw a blade, which cut the radiator hose right in half
>and almost came
>through the bonnet. But that's another story... After we finally got home,
>I noticed that
>another of the old tires had started to separate, so it wouldn't have
>lasted much longer.
>
>So, do I run on old tires? Never again!
>
>Granted, my XJ6 wieghs 4500 pounds, and your MGB is a full ton lighter,
>and the Jag's
>205-15's are not that much bigger than your 185-14's, so the demands on
>the Jag's
>tires are greater than for the tires on your MGB... but on the other hand,
>I'll bet that my
>Jag is a whole lot more stable during a blow-out at freeway speed than our
>MGB's...
>
>You decide.
>
>Marvin
Barrie Robinson
barrie@look.ca
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