Another nail in a tire...

Getting sick of this. Not too long ago the Turbo left rear tire picked up a nail and I had to have both rear tires replaced.

The other day spotted a low left front tire on the Boxster and sure enough at the dealer the SA spotted a nail head showing real close to the sidewall. (At the dealer service drive where I had parked the car it just so happened the nail head was visible.)

I'm not alone I guess. The SAs tell me in the summer especially they see a number of cars in for tire issues every week.

The Boxster tire news has a bright spot in it. The SA emailed me the new tire should be here today and she checked the Boxster service records and confirmed the tires on the Boxster are not that old having been replaced sometime last year, last fall, and the tire with the nail is therefore covered under some kind of tire warranty so the tire and its replacement should be done at no cost to me.

Congrats on warranty coverage...I seem to get nails in runs as well.

"Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!"

Service managerment told me the tire supplier is getting slow sometimes in delivering tires. A "promised" delivery of "next day" often turns out to mean "a couple of days".

In this case the tire was I was told promised sometime Tuesday but didn't arrive until too late Wednesday to get it mounted. But the tire was mounted sometime Thursday and I picked the car up Friday.

Oh, there was some kind of warranty as there was no charge for the tire, its mounting and balancing.

Also, some more good luck: Fortunately because the tires hadn't been in service all that long -- since last fall and I did some digging through my files and I've only driven the Boxster barely 10K miles in the last 12 months -- and the tire wear wasn't that much fitting a new tire didn't require the tire on the other side be replaced.

As I was waiting for someone to follow me home and bring me back after I dropped the car off a Turbo S Cab drove in and the owner's complaint? A low tire.

Marc,

You live in the same area as I do. The roads are not swept or maintained. I also have three cars with cracked windshields too from rock damage from the deteriorating roads..
I can't get more than 3-5,000 on a set of rear tires because my car is a nail magnet. Just put on another set a few weeks ago
Only got 2,000 miles out of the previous set.

Went over a piece of iron in my wife's BMW on Memorial Day. Tire was toasted. We were on a road trip in the middle of nowhere. No spare as it was a run flat. Hate those tires.
Lucky to be able to make it to a shop that had one in that size but it was not a run flat but got us home.

3000 to 5000 miles? Man oh man, you have worse luck than me.

My tire problems seem to come in waves. No issues for so long I can't remember the last time then boom. A tire issue then often another. And sometimes even a 3rd. (Some few years back the Turbo picked up a nail. Got a new tire under the road hazard coverage the tires had at the time an even though the tires had around 20K miles. I was surprised when the SM told me the new tire was being covered but he said the tech measured the tread depth and the tire had the 3mm of tread that was the cut off point so a new tire would be fitted at no cost to me. 'course, I had to be the tire on the other side. Not too long after getting new tires I'll be darned if one of the new tires didn't pick up a nail. The tire distributor balked about replacing the new tire so soon after it being replaced before but the dealer when to bat for me and the new tire with a nail was replaced at no cost.)

I finally bought a DIY plug kit. It is not perfect by any means. But I have plugged the tires on all of our cars many times now. So much that I used an entire package of "rope things." No issue at all, they all hold air well.

If I was tracking the car(s) it might be different. But so far...

I have a plug kit at least one in one of the cars, probably the 996 Turbo as it comes from the factory with an air compressor to inflate the space saver spare tire.

Also, I have a nearby tire store that will plug/patch the tires too. The trouble is like with Boxster tire the hole was too close to the side wall. Fortunately the tire warranty covered this tire.

In the case of the Turbo I drove the car on an under inflated tire just a few blocks and even if the hole was not too close to the side wall -- and I don't recall now where it was if I even bothered to ask -- the tire was not repairable.

No punctures in the last 10 years. 3 or 4 cars at a time, maybe 2-10k miles per year each.

The only punctures I can recall are from an off road excursion my wife took causing a sidewall rip and a parking lot effort on my part that failed to see a steel girder sticking out of a storm drain which likewise caused a sidewall rip.

Another theory might be the wider the tire the more probability your tread area would contact some damaging object.

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