charlieXS

yeah right...

ok so coming home yesterday (30m from home) I hit a BIG machine screw in the gutter, I heard it hit and got out and saw it was a BIG possibly 1/4 or 3/8 inch hex head machine screw. In my experience I'd always thought that when looking at a screw in a tire, it's ok to drive because the screw acts as a plug. So I thought I'd keep it about 55mph on the 5 in Socal to the 118 to get home. Well aout 5 or 6 miles on the freeway I hear a BAM and hear the whistle...

So it's a flat and i'm on the right shoulder of the 118 near sepulveda at about 6pm on a Sunday. So I head to the back to take a look at the Porsche spare tire kit... looks easy enough. Oh yeah, I pulled the air pump out to fill the tire on my mountain bike the week before!

So call out a towing companyto fill the spare with AIR and they charge me $75...
We're lucky the 4 of us didn't get whacked by a errant 18 wheeler... it's an uncomfortable feeling sitting in the car 24" from 75mph traffic at a stop.

Lesson learned?

1) Keep the Air pump with the car.

2) If you pick up a screw with a big heavy hex head (not a nail) it will spin back OUT of the tire with centrifugal force. CHANGE the tire out BEFORE the freeway in that case.

Oh well...

So today I take the tire to a shop and they say the hole is TOO BIG to be patched, even with a good TECH patch/plug. SO she's parked for a while.

I pretty much refuse to buy a 17" tire when I'm looking to upgrade anyways. I figure a new Dunlop is $200... and on eBay all the time I see new car take off 18" Turbo wheels with near new PZeros... @ $400...

Oh and who was the guy in the black 996tt who honked at me from the fast lane?

VinnyC

I totally feel for you. I have to say I recently had a flat on my Cayenne and it turned out to be a NIGHTMARE!! Luckily I was not very far from home, I'll tell you why. But first -
Here is a piece of advice for all of you. GET FAMILAR WITH THE PROCEDURE OF INFLATING THE SPARE TIRE!!

First of all, I was totally un-impressed with the spare tire / air pump engineering. Why in the world Porsche would create such a terrible system is beyond me.
For min. $60K SUV, the least they could do is give a full size spare. Put the spare on a steel rim if you have to, but it would be 1000X easier and safer. All the engineering and design involved made this MUCH too complicated!!!!! Just a plain old spare tire and a jack is all I wanted at that moment.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how to inflate the spare. When I finally found the 20FT Air hose under the rear seat, I could not figure out where to attach the air hose to get air. Why it's placed under the passenger seat is a mystery. Most people, I think, would look for it where the spare is located or at minimum next to the compressor tank or the hose itself.

I had to leave the car on the jack...have my wife pick me up...and go home to read the users manual to figure out how to operate the air compressor / tire inflator. It was very embarrasing and dangerous to say the least - not to mention it took 2 hours to get rolling again.

charlieXS

yeah my 2006 has a small electric operated air pump next to the spare (works well on bike tires too) and that spare (Vredestein) is weird, when it inflates it's totally off center until it gets 50psi inside. Weird. I spotted a new set of 18's with color crest and new PZeros on ebay for $500 local... I may just get those. I've been looking for an excuse to get rid of the 17's...

LVDell

Doesn't PCNA provide roadside assitance so you didn't have to pay the $75?

charlieXS

well.... 2 things.

1) I didn't have the PAG card on me and the manual is at home. It was too late to call the P dealer on Sunday to get the phone number... little did I know (smacks myself) that it's just 1-800 porsche...

2) says in paperwork that they (porsche roadside) don't cover emergency towtruck/flat repairif the flat tire is from external forces ( I kid you not) damage, and you will be charged, lol... so it may not have helped if I did have the number.

LVDell

WTF?!?!?!?! So let me get this straight. You can run over a "hazard" unintentionaly and need to pay for it yet you can be a frickin moron and run the tank dry and they will bring you "free" gas? Sometimes I just don't get PCNA

charlieXS

yeah check out your roadside assistance brochure in the manual pack...

yetis

Huh? I took two machine bolts in BOTH rear wheels of 996 on the BQE. After two hours of waiting, the flat bed arrived and PCNA paid the bill. I even drove well past the closest Porsche dealer.

skl

That's what I love about our S4- full size spare mounted on a matching alloy rim... hope I don't have to figure out how to use the pump in the PASM some night on the shoulder of the interstate. Most morons going by never get over even though it's a state law...

VinnyC

2006 Cayenne Has the air pump in the trunk?? My 04 has it underneath the front pass. seat.

jkseger

Though my story is not Porsche related, I had a similar life-altering experience. My wife and I were on our way to northern Michigan from the northwest suburbs of Chicago and travelling down the Dan Ryan when we must have run over something. Anyway, we heard the rumbling of the fron-left tire (on our 02 RX300) being flat just before getting to the bridge of the Skyway.

So, here I am trying to change the flat with this crappy (useless) jack in between an on ramp and the right lane of the Chicago Skyway. I was scared beyond belief, for sure. Semis would go by at full speed and not even bother to move over. Thankfully this was at 5:45 am. I can't imagine what it would have been like at a busier time. After about 15 minutes, an IDOT truck with a real jack came by to help and the guys even changed my tire for me. We gave them a nice tip and went on our way.

But for the next few days, I was a mess. All I could think about was this semi coming inches from taking me out, my arms frantically moving trying get the lugnuts off, watching helplessly as the jack was starting to tip over, and my knuckles scraping the asphalt with every turn getting more bloody by the second.

Ugh.

John

ltc

Under the front passenger seat?
Are you sure?
You must have a VERY limited edition Cayenne if it's really mounted under there.

BTW, the first part of dealing with a problem is admitting you have a problem.
It would appear as though you don't have your Cayenne (publically) listed in your sig, nor as a pic in your avatar?
Is the Cayenne the 'black sheep' of your garage?

ChipAZ

I am getting the rear spare carrier. This Germanic system seems crazy.

mjw930

You have a connection under the front passenger seat if you have PASM (Air Suspension). Steel suspension cars get a 12V pump that sits next to the spare (if you have one )

yetis

Apart from the cost, who don't you see more of these. I think I have seen one Cayenne with an external wheel holder. I agree with you, a crappy spare tire on a Cayenne, especially one with 20" wheels is just not a solution. What really worries me the most, is that I puncture a side wall in northern Maine on a Saturday afternoon or someplace equally far from a tire source. While I might no be able to find a place to mount a replacement tire, the 500 mile trip back on Sunday with a undersized spare would not be fun.