A flat tire isn’t a fun thing to get when you’re driving, but sometimes it can be a pain for the mechanic fixing your tire. Most flat tires I’ve seen are just a puncture and usually we can just plug it. Sometimes it’s not in a part of the tire we can fix so the whole tire needs replacing.

But then you get the bad ones. The tires that were driven on after they went completely flat. If you ever get a flat tire, pull over and change to your spare as soon as possible, because you might be able to save the flat tire. Otherwise, if you keep on driving, all the stresses that the tire wasn’t meant to take just tear it apart. Sometimes in Nascar and other racing you see a flat tire just fly apart and take out sections of sheetmetal on the car.

Um…

Then there was this. The repair order just said something along the lines of “replace flat tire in trunk”. I figured it would be the usual, a tire we can’t just plug so it’s getting replaced. But then I opened the trunk and didn’t see a tire, only a wheel with some rubber stuck to it. The driver had obviously driven even longer than the one in the previous picture.

…wow.

The big problem with this one was getting what remained off of the tire, because the usual  methods involve having an actual tire to work with, but eventually we managed to get it off. Definitely the worst tire I’ve ever seen.

If you want to contact me, you can comment or find me on Facebook and Twitter. New posts every Monday and Thursday!

-Dan