Vauxhall Corsa - Puncture

[rosyposy]

I have a 55 Corsa and yesterday I got a puncture :o( when mr posy got the spare wheel out he noticed that it was a different size to the other 4 on the car, which were 185x55xR15and the spare is 175x65x14. It hasn't been used since we bought the car when it was 6months old so we had no idea. Does anyone know if this is legal and more importantly safe to drive please? A friend told me that Vauxhall did this to save money -which I find odd, but nothing surprises me these days!
Also unfortunately when we took the punctured tyre to the garage the man said he was unable to fix it as it was damaged. It is a Continental premium tyre and he said there was a fault with these in the tread, which he showed us and he said it could explode!!! He took the nail out which was all he could do, so we will need a new tyre.(The fault was nothing to do with the nail by the way) As the car was just MOT'd and passed last Wednesday I would have thought the garage would have picked up on that? Of course I am worrying because the other rear tyre is also a continental.Sorry to be so long winded but would appreciate anyone's comments on these issues. TIA -rosy

[TWR]

I'm sorry to say but, you should have checked the car throughout when you bought it, have a look at your local scrap yards for a replacement tyre / wheel. Do not bother with these get your home spares, they are a waste of time / money.

[CoffeeLounge]

Most new cars now have spare wheels that are samller(it is really common in the USA).
The idea is to save money for the manufacturers but the aim of the spare now is to get you to a garage to replace the punctured one.
All legal apparently.

[rosyposy]

Thank you both for replying. Of course the spare will only be on until after the weekend when we can get a new tyre, I just wanted to know if this was a common practise really, and also if the garage should have noticed the tyre being faulty - don't intend doing anything about it, just curious. Maybe the nail saved us from something far worse -who knows.so we will probably replace both Cotinentals. We did check the car TWR but I suppose just checked that the spare was there, never thought it might be a different size!-rosy

[Graham-W]

Just checked and the rolling circumference is identical on both tyre sizes so it should cause no problem. If the circumference was different and the tyres were fitted to the driven wheels, it could cause gearbox (differential) problems.
http://www.alloywheels.com/Tyre_Calculator

[TWR]

Rosy, The "get you home wheel" is just a waste of time, as you say, another way for the makers to save money at the expence of the customer,if you look on ebay or at your local scrap yards you can pick one up cheap, but check the wheel size, the do not check the spare for MOTs.

[rosyposy]

Thank you Graham for looking that up, it is very reassuring :0)
I'm afraid I can't have explained properly TWR, I meant that I thought the garage should have picked up on the fault on the tread of the tyre I punctured,(it was only a week ago after all) not the size of the spare wheel. Surely they must check the treads as the car would fail if the tyres weren't up to par. I think with Graham's link that we will be o.k to keep the smaller wheel as the spare it was intended to be, but thank you again for the advice about looking for a new one :o) -rosy

[Toureman]

The small spare wheel saves weight and gives you slightly more space in the boot it also helps the owner of the car by making it more economical so they are not a waste of "time and money!

[Hopkirk]

I agree with Toureman - if the "get you home" tyre gets you home, it is not a waste of time.

[chas2008]

space savers dont save money,they save space....they can actually cost more than the standard tyre/wheel, especially when its a steel one.

[chas2008]

as regards the continental tyre we use them on a regular basis and i have never heard of a problem with them, a lot of manufactures fit them from new so they cant be that bad....I would assume if there was a serious fault with them it would of hit the press by now and they really couldnt afford to take chances with something like a tyre,they would have compensation claims coming out of there ears...

[jake-the-peg]

I agree Chas I've just been looking around the web for anything on recalls or common faults on continentals and haven't found anything.

Might be that he was drawing attention to a fault on that particular one and not a widespread issue.

They will inspect tyres on an MOT but it will most likely be tread depth and a look to insure there's no obviously dangerous damage - they certainly won't do a detailed inspection - a fault like that might or might not get picked up on an MOT.

But it's difficult without seeing the damage on the tyre.

Incidently - I don't know how old the tyre was - they're warrented for 5 years by the manufacturer but sometimes cars that don't get a lot of use can end up with quite old tyres on them

To check the age there should be on the side a 4 digit number by where it says DOT the first two digits are the week number it was made in and the last two are the year so 2208 means week 22 of 2008

If there is just 3 numbers it's pre-2000

[Hopkirk]

A lot of places these days are saying they can't repair tyres, mostly so they can sell more.

I repaired my own and it's still going fine. While deflated I used a bradawl to work some superglue into the puncture point.

I then administered one of these tyre repair sprays and made sure the puncture was at the bottom for a while.

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