Going on a Roadtrip in your FD? Check your spare!!
 

My buddy and I made the trek from Chicago to Indy for the Midwest Mazda Fest. Great time, good event, and very well managed by the indy rx8 club. Anyway, after having some food and finishing off the evening at JIllians, in downtown Indy (Think Dave and Busters) my buddy and I decided to head back home.

We started towards Elgin, only to decide to detour to my parents house to help fix her crazy computer problems she was having. So we get off at exit 201 on I65 to cut across IN to IL via IL116 and US 52. Somewhere between Iroquios IL and Donavan IL, I thought I heard a little "snap" or "pop" sound. nothing too crazy audible, and with the way the exhaust pops it is probably just a rich condition, right?

Well I am moving slowly (~45MPH) through Donovan when I suddenly start to feel a nasty vibration when I start to accellerate. It goes away for a min or two, we go over some railroad tracks, and suddenly its all out shimmying and vib'ing to hell out the back end. So we pull over now about 2-3 miles out of the closest town, if you want to call a few trailer homes, a couple houses, a bar and a flashing yellow light a town.

We are in the middle of no where. No street lights, no mile markers, nothing. So I am thinking no big deal I have a spare, albeit a donut, and it will allow us to limp home. Open up the trunk get to the spare to discover... its flat. So at this point I get on the phone with my Ins. Company to get Roadside assistance on the line. I end up arguing with this lady for about 30 mins about my exact location and explaining I just need someone with a portable compressor.

In the meantime, two people pull up see our situation (one in an Escalade which I know has a portable compressor in the back) getting the only response, you are on your own. WTF!?! Finally two guys in a Chevy avalanche truck swing by, tells us their jack, compressor etc was jacked 3 months back, but told us they would take us 10mins down the road to a gas station to fill the spare with air. My buddy takes the spare and goes with these guys (we talk onthe cell to make sure things are cool a few times...I probably should ahve gone with him) while I get my AFTERMARKET rim positioned for removal. No light = no way to get the jack setup, but I got the center cap off and had everyting ready. They come back with the spare filled, parked in a way to give us light and we jack the car up. Keyed Nut goes first no problem. Then we hit our next hurdle. AFTERMARKET rim...

The thick wall wrench wouldn't fit in the thin wall clearance for lugs on this rim. (the keyed lug had a thin wall extension so it was fine) The guys in the Avalanche didn't have any tools. So here we are at 1AM in the middle of nowhere. We start flagging down cars and luckily the 3rd truck that came down the road was hauling a GO KART trailier and he said he had standard sockets in the back!! SCORE. He gets us the socket and the wratchet and sure enough we are able to change the tire. and get on our way.

We ended up stopping 4 times to check the donut tire press, lugs and caffinate our selves. @ 45MPH we made the remaining part of the trip in 3hrs time.

If you are going on a road trip, double check your spare tire guys!!!

That's not just for the FD. Regularly check any car's spare tire as a flat spare doesn't do you any good.

shit I know how you feel. I had the same problem with the socket not fitting in my Impuls on my Skyline. Sat for 4 hours waiting for BCAA to show up with tools....

What kind of tires are those? I had some Avon's on my Saab and all 4 separated like that after 20k miles.

funny how it separated right at the safety warning

This reminds me of the time when I was driving on the highway and got a flat, only to find out I had the wrong spare tire in my trunk from the dealer for my G35... I was so pissed since I had to pay for the towing which took them 5 hours to show up.

They are (or guess I should say were) Toyo Proxes.

my toyo proxes did the same thing on another car.