Re: BOFHride NL 2007

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 01:49:58 +0000 (UTC), Anthony de Boer - USEnet <abuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
| Stuart Lamble posted thus:
|>They're called "space saver" spares here in .au. It's enough of a
|>problem that if/when I go to procure a replacement car, I'll be
|>insisting on a full size spare tyre as a condition of purchase. No full
|>size spare, or nowhere to put it, equals no sale. The RACV[1] has been
|>decrying this practice (the inclusion of space savers, that is, not
|>refusing to buy a car with one) for a while, but to no apparent effect.
|
| The full-size tires are awfully heavy and bulky, so they do cut into the
| amount of crap you can haul, and cut into gas mileage a wee bit.
|
| They may have their point in an urban setting, where you'd not have to
| travel more than 50km to get your real tire fixed or replaced. In fact,
| the number of people who know how to do it (especially since they *don't*
| fail anywhere near as often as they did in the Olden Days), who are
| wearing clothes that don't have to stay clean for the office, who keep
| the spare inflated, and/or who won't just whip out the cell and call for
| someone to fix it for them is diminishing, and the next thing we're going
| to see is cars completely losing the vestigal spare tire.
|
| Way out miles from nowhere, though, a real spare tire and basic tools
| and supplies and survival kit and water and clues will continue to be
| essential.


About 2 weeks ago, I ran off the side of the road about here:

Lat -17.862586° Lon 144.942287°

Needed a lift about 25km to the nearest town to arrange to be towed out
of the ditch. Once out, one tire needed to be replaced due to a loose
tree branch going in one side wall and out the other. Apart from some
panel damage, and the tire change, the car was drive away. It just took
over 24 hours to convince the (out of state) insurance company of that.

The (full sized) spare was very useful. Changing it was easy, since I
had all the gear, including an electric tire nut driver that ran from
a cigarette lighter socket. Much easier than the hand operated spanner.

The unexpected stop was due to an on-coming road-train that didn't want
to share the single lane worth of sealed road surface.


--
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC. http://andor.dropbear.id.au/~paulcol
Asking for technical help in newsgroups? Read this first:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro
.

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