So, maybe don't pump your tires to sidewall maximum.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

... unless the seller made some specific false declarations of fitness they owe nothing.

Well, the mechanic told him everything was fine, which is obviously not true if the tires are of different sizes and are distorting the ride. And the seller seems to have represented as roadworthy a car that is clearly was not safe: different sized, ancient tires is definitely unsafe. If AZ has laws around those issue, he could have a case. I'm just glad Xist didn't get worse... With a little bad luck, he could have been hospitalized in a tire blowout at speed. Yikes, hey!

[rmay635703]

Tire blowouts happen, buyer beware.

My father paid $500 for a fully restored wheel horse tractor
Dryrotted drive belt blew after 10 uses, belt was 17 years old

Think we got any satisfaction?

[redpoint5]

How fast were you traveling when it blew?

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Did he get to keep the bus?

People's Court- who knows?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

When I took it to a mechanic he said one front wheel was slightly larger than the other, but he said they were the right size.

I'm more than a little confused here. How can one wheel be "slightly larger" than the other? Wheels only come in fixed sizes. It's not likely that 14 and 15 inch wheels would even have the same bolt pattern.

Maybe you/he meant that the tires were slightly different sizes? If so, so what? Unless they're on drive wheels with a limited slip differential, it's not going to hurt anything.

He didn't mention they were cheap tires and after the tread came off and damaged my car I realized two tires, including the one that blew, were one size too small.

Having tires one size too small (or two large) does nothing except perhaps affect your fuel economy and speedometer accuracy a bit. Nor is it going to cause tread separation.

[jcp123]

I hear ya on this one.

My Civic has some rather aged tires, and one is likewise smaller than the others (175/56/14 vs. the correct 185/65/14s). Worse, I can't pump any of them up at all as the valve stems are jammed, presumably by the PO using Slime or something. Idiot.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by jcp123

I hear ya on this one.

My Civic has some rather aged tires, and one is likewise smaller than the others (175/56/14 vs. the correct 185/65/14s). Worse, I can't pump any of them up at all as the valve stems are jammed, presumably by the PO using Slime or something. Idiot.

Get a $0.99 valve stem kit and tool, should be easy to needle out the crud then replace the valve.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

How fast were you traveling when it blew?

Under 5 mph , but it grenaded into my bare leg

[redpoint5]

Sounds like these were re-treads, and I have no experience with those.

I've run 30 year old motorcycle tires that were severely cracking, but never had a blowout or tread separation. A tire has to be severely damaged, or very improperly used, for it to blow out or have tread separation.

Still wondering how fast Xist was going on the vibrating tire prior to it completely failing?

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Under 5 mph , but it grenaded into my bare leg

LOL, I should have prefaced my question with -Xist. I didn't think you were drag racing that Wheel Horse.

[jcp123]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Get a $0.99 valve stem kit and tool, should be easy to needle out the crud then replace the valve.

Genius. I should have thought of that, I have two or three floating around somewhere.

[Xist]

I swear I updated this! I bought a fender, resonator, headlight, and bumper for under $200. The resonator was a pain because I could not find it on car-part.com, I called Pluck-A-Part, which had parts I needed, but the woman just said "That sounds like part of the engine. We don't have it."

It is mounted under the bumper. It is definitely not part of the engine.

The donor car had the resonator, but was a V6, and the part is different. I was worried that if the tread ripped out the inside of the headlight assembly it also damaged the wiring.

It did.

I went back to Pluck-A-Part, cut off the wiring, and noticed a nearby black Accord with a resonator.

I ended up ordering mine from LKQ and waiting days.

I bought a soldering iron and everything I felt I needed to splice properly, but my mechanic friend told me to just use butt joints. I did in the interest of time and tried to use heat shrink tubing, but that really does not work with butt joints. I tucked it into a split conduit and wrapped everything in electrical tape.

I also needed to bend some brackets back into shape. It seemed like none of the plastic fasteners I popped out were reusable. The guy at O'Reilly sold me two blister packs with two 5/8th Screw-In Rivets. I needed more, but that was all they had. I was surprised the Imperial fasteners fit my import.

As I mentioned in my Nowhere thread, as soon as I fixed my car and tried to leave town a van rear-ended me on the freeway. I still need to take a picture of my car with the replacement bumper and fender. The clear coat is flaking off the bumper, so when I have the time I will sand it down and repaint, but I definitely think the front looks better.

The rear bumper is worse for wear, but I expected far worse. I was not injured.