[johnruben]

had the worst experience tonight (few mins back), I was driving in Hosur Main Road (electronic city) and I heard strange noise coming from the left wheels, thought it was Wheel Cap causing noise and I decreased my speed to 60KMPH, I reached my brother's Cafeteria and dumped his Goods and there I saw that my Rear tyre was punctured , The time was 12:15AM and I asked watchmen to help me change spare tyre, and he agreed. I was shocked to see even the spare tyre was cut and Nozzle was missing, i Had a breakdown couple of months back and I had used the spare one with the and had completely forgot about fixing the broken tyre and now I am in a mess.

Now both spare trye and my rear left tyre was without nozzle and punctured. I thought i will slowly drive towards Service road and see if any puncture shop, so i started my vehicle and started driving at 20-25KMPH finding any puncture shop, Unfortunately all shops were closed as time was 1:20AM.

Finally I decided its unsafe to stop anywhere and drove my vehicle home with a punctured tyre. I reached home at around 2:20AM and had nearly driven 28-30KM with a bad tyre.

I have few questions, please help me:

1. Since I drove with punctured tyre for ~30km, what all would have damaged? Can these be repaired?

2. I want to replace all my 5 tyres to tubeless one's (also give me option for Alloys), please tell me how much do they cost and which Size is preferable for Maruti 800 and do they take my old tyres in return ?

Other Maruti 800 Owners please help me in getting new sets of tyres and help me make good decision

Thanks.

[tanwaramit]

by driving for more than 30kms , your tyres must have got cut, tube must have gone away with lots of cuts.

This tube is definitely worth throwing away, tyres, would be in a bad situation as well.

Get tubeless tyres on your steel rims, you can always go for an option of alloys later on.

Upgrade 4 tyres instead of 5 and keep the stepney intact with a tube tyre, and keep checking it regularly (dont ride on tube tyre for more than 30kms), that way, you would ensure that it is always in a good shape.

For tyre sizes for M800, search in the forum and you will find out.

[MX6]

Oh man. That's sad. I had punctures on two tyres during my recent trip to Harihareshwar. The first one had a cut valve (wall tube) as well because I drove around 10 - 20 seconds I guess on a flat tyre.

Guess its' time to go for tubeless for you on existing rims. Keep the best tyre and best tube with you as stepney.

[vasanthn21]

I have had quite a few tyre punctures:

2 - Wheeler:

1. Middle of the night: This was way back in 2002-03, I had gone to office on my 2 wheeler, and had to work late. At around 2.00am in the night, I decided to call it a and head back home for a good sleep. Went to the parking lot and saw my 2 wheeler (activa) was punctured!
Did not have spare tyre + did not have toolkit + no shops would be open in the middle of the night. Went back to office, pulled 2 chairs together and had a good nights sleep. The office boys who were in early to clean the place, woke me up. Went out, had breakfast and went to the nearby mechanic who fixed it.
2. A rather scary one: I was coming back from a function, riding on race course road with my friends wife on the pillion seat. My activa suddenly behaved differently and pulled to one side of the road! Stopped to realize there was a puncture. Thankfully activa had gel filled tubes which I believe contributed in the vehicle not going out of control! I have thanked my stars a million times for this, because my friend's wife was pregnant!

4 - Wheeler

1. Numerous punctures: Bought a second hand 2005 model zen in 2008 with 19K on the ODO. The mileage was not much to warrant change of tyres. But, age of the tyre was the culprit here.

The previous owner used the car in the garage for most of his ownership tenure, hence the wear on the tyre was not much. But, somehow the tyres had gone super soft.

I had very frequent punctures especially in the last 6 months. Drive on a slightly rough road and puncture! The affair became so frequent that i literally became an expert in changing tyres.

Every time, the puncture repair guy would search for nail (or some other sharp object) and not finding one would finally state "kalletu sir" (meaning hit from a stone!)

At one point, my wife started suspecting my driving and commented, " Why does your car keep getting punctured when no one else does!? May be you drive a lot on the corner of the road and not on tar!!!"

Finally, having enough of "kalletu", i changed to tubeless a month back, and "touchwood", no punctures after that!

[johnruben]

Thanks guys, Morning when i visited the puncture shop, he showed me 4cm long Nail and the tube was completely ripped off, he said tyre is also damaged and he would put another coating of used tube around new tube for basic protection.

Cost of tube: Rs. 350 (JK)
Labour charge for fitting: Rs. 50
Total Paid (after bargain): Rs. 350

now i have searched all TBHP forum and found 145/80-R12 tubeless from Michellin to be good with my existing Rims, since all my Rims are good, but due to a financial crunch this month, i will run with this tyres for another 5-6k KM.

[nix1976in]

My 2 cents here....

Tale 1 :

Ages ago when in college, we had gone for a drive to Sanjay Gandhi National park in Mumbai towards Kanheri caves in an Omni...7-8 of us including some girls...by dusk we turned around and my friend was revving the car in high spirits (literally)...There was a small ledge on the approach to a small bridge and the omni's small tyres banged into it and voila...2 tyres burst on the spot and somehow we came to a stop. Now, we were in the middle of the jungle with darkness setting in and no way to get the car moving.

Suddenly, we saw 2 forest gaurds come our way and instead of helping us they told us horror tales of tribals lootting and pilfering parked cars...they offered to drop off the girls to the entrance of the park and advised is to stay back till next morning to safegaurd the car. So, here we were in the middle of the jungle, with all kinds of weird noises, mosquitoes galore and tribals lurking somewhere...trust me it was not funny then. Somehow we got thru the night till the forest gaurds came with towing van the next morning.

Tale 2 :

Well...this was around the time when leopard attacks were regualr in the powai, ghodbunder and national park areas in Mumbai. One fine night, 4 of us were travelling down Ghodbunder road at around 1.30am to get back to Mumbai from Thane and we get a flat with the car rolling to a stop right under a billboard depicting a leopard with a notice for the public to be careful in that area. None of us could muster courage to get off to change in the pitch dark with a phantom leopard lurking somewhere. We stayed put for almost 1 hour before common sense took over and we got off to change the tyre.

[vasanthn21]

Both your experiences are quite scary Nikhil.

Really bad bad time for punctures.

I guess tubeless tyres will be a great relief in such situations. You can at least crawl to safety!

[Lightening-Fast]

I drive a Chevy Spark and because it has a tubeless tyre, i could not notice my vehicle had a puncture right away. I was supposed to drop my mom to Mysore on a Sunday afternoon. Hence went to tank up and also check for air pressure. By the time i was back home, i saw a noticeable decrease in air pressure. Thought it might be a puncture and drove for 6 kms before i found someone who deals with punctures for tubeless tyres. It costed me 130 bucks for the same. And this happened within 1 month of my vehicle purchase. But how does the nail know its a new car

[vasanthn21]

Originally Posted by Lightening-Fast

But how does the nail know its a new car

and in many cases "how does the nail know it is a new tyre"

[blackasta]

I had one puncture in USA (23000+ miles) and that too due to my carelessness while I got too close to a belgian block curb. The sidewall was cut and the tire got deflated in couple of minutes. Had to replace the tire. Other than that - nothing. I used cooper lifeliner touring tires.

In India (10000+ kms) - I have had 1 puncture till date when a 2 inch long sharp screw lodged itself in my driver side rear tire. I must have had it while returning home one night and did not realize that before next morning, when the tire appeared a bit deflated. But I could drive to office slowly (below 60 kmph) and get it fixed near my office. Cost be around 100/- and the guy pulled out the screw & fixed the tire in 5 minutes! I use Yokohama AVS ES 100 here.

[Gansan]

Fortunately I have had very few punctures to worry about in more than a quarter century of riding/driving. They are as follows:

Bikes:

1) Ind-Suzuki, (owned 1986 - 89), did 18000 KM, no punctures.

2) KB 100 RTZ, (owned 1989 - 95), did 39000 KM, 2 punctures, both in Chennai.

3) Suzuki Shogun (owned 1993 - 2000), did 40000 + KM, no punctures.

4) Splendor, (2000 - till date), 84500 KM, 3 punctures, all at Bangalore.


Cars:

1) Dolphin, (1993 - 96), did ~ 12000 KM, no punctures.

2) Alto LXi, (June'09 - till date), done 6700 KM, no punctures (touch wood!).

That's about it, 5 punctures in 25 years. As I drive mostly during day time and on well paved roads, I constantly scan the road ahead and can usually spot and avoid a nail or any other metal on the road. But my friends don't believe me and think I am charmed! Oh, and I also religiously maintain my tyres, and replace them when about 20% tread is still left.

[GTO]

I've been pretty lucky with tyres, I guess. No puncture on the Yokohama ES100s in 25,000 kms of driving (Vtec). The Jeep has only had 1 in the last year (caught a foreign object while off-roading). 1 each for the Benz & Civic. The Indigo, however, has several, thanks in part to the lousy OEM tyres.

Originally Posted by aZa

My left front tyre is punctured but since its tubeless i've been running it for a while now by filling in air every other day.

Why procrastinate? Wouldn't it be simpler to have the puncture repaired once and for all?

[lancer_rit]

Have been pretty lucky with punctures on my Lancer - knock on wood.
OEM MRF ZV2K was really puncture resistant. The 1st puncture after 40k, and 2nd one after 46k when tyre was ~5 years old. And have driven over some of the worst road surfaces in India.
MXV8 going strong for 2.5years and ~25k km w/o any. One time, while doing wheel balancing, a small nail was pulled out, but it didn't cause a puncture due to tubeless characteristics.

Had suffered a couple of punctures in Matiz and M800 over ~50k+ km each and tubed radials.

[Surprise]

5 yrs with Swift has only one puncture...that too when I was not there. Very poor experience with Apollo Accelere on Baleno, when it comes to puncture...almost 10+ punctures in 8 months

Edit: And its every time someone points outs the punctured wheel

[somu_john]

My bikes front stock tyres (MRF zapper) began giving me problems after 40000+K. But the tyre had lot of thread left on it, but being 4+ yrs old the rubber had gone bad and had developed cracks. But the rear tyre is still good enough even though it is slightly short on threads, it has never given me problems.

When puncture became like a daily routine for me I finally decided to get the front tyre upgraded to a MRF zapper tubeless. First month after the change was fine, but now every 5 days i have to get the air topped up (it goes down to 10-12psi).

No puncture repairwala could find the reason, and they are suggesting me to put a tube inside. But my stock rear tyre is still doing good after 50000+Kms.

All suggessions are welcome.