Before going on a long trip, I checked the tyres including the 'Pram wheel' and was amazed at what I found. The wheel was completely flat and further investigation found that the metal stem of the valve had parted company with the surrounding rubber. I have no idea what caused the failure or if this is an unusual type of valve only found on these wheels. Might be worth anyone else with an ageing Prius checking there own 'spare'. I would like to post a picture .jpg or .png but keeps returning "There as a problem uploading your file" even though it appears to load the full 132KB file size. Any suggestions?
Yeah it just got old and failed I guess it's just a pull-in type tire valve stem there's a special tool you screw onto the threads and you full commit into the hole with this tool tire valve stems are generally pretty cheap pretty cheap to manufacture so on and so forth so it just got old rotted and failed sounds like can't wait to see the picture so you have a new one put on they'll inflate your spare they'll spin it and check it make sure it's safe to use as a spare and put it back in funny thing about the setup is is that it has to be upside down so the tire valve stem is facing the bottom of the trunk and you can't check it or fill it without removing it flipping it over so on and so forth and then your tool caddy doesn't fit and screw down so what some people have done is use the Schrader valve extension tube and apply that to the valve put the tire back in the spare tire well feed the tube you just applied into the center of the wheel basically and come through one of the spokes screw down your tool caddy Make sure your air hose and your tire checking tool can access the new hose you just put in and just for haha's go ahead and take a reading add or subtract is needed and now you're all set up for the fairly long haul maybe you'll check it a little more often to make sure it doesn't have the same demise as this one.
Good catch. I find that very few people ever check the inflation or condition of the "spare" tire. Heck, lots of people ignore the road tires until they can't. Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
When we purchased our new ‘10 Prius, from Open Road Toyota in Port Moody after paying full PDI, spare was at 40 psi (supposed to be 60). Always like to give them a plug.
Thanks for your quick response. I will take it into a tyre repair centre tomorrow, but as for the picture, I did look at the comments regarding the migration and it appears that posting pictures is one of the problems. Hopefully, it will be sorted out before too long and I will be able to upload it.
The one way I know to reliably post pics now, is to upload to something like Google Drive, then post a link here. Site owner has not posted here since Dec 13th, 2023.
Thanks, but I think you need to sign up etc. probably not the best way to do it, but no problem downloading it as my avatar!
That wouldn't be lethal that would be just like your tire got cooled while you're rolling Cool does an old '60s terminology for letting air out of tires kids used to do that. I've had tires blow out on the interstate before going 80 mph you know what happened nothing The steering wheel moved a little bit of course I took my foot off the gas pulled over to the side of the road to see my damaged styled steel wheel on my Corolla SR5. An eventually put the jack under the middle of the car and jack that whole side up put the proper rear tire on the front and the wrong sized spare on the back I went home and put the right wheels in the right place oh well some shrapnel beat on the fender liner about it no wreck no nothing. Even had a blowout on my motorcycle I figured oh well I'm going to be dead now nope pretty much just bump bump bump bump bump and the back end was really squirmy duh no air Honda magna v65 just pulled over to the side of the road they'll be no spare changing this was before cell phones pretty good fun.
Some of us are disabling javascript, uploading the image and getting a URL link on PriusChat, copying that link, re-enabling javascript, and pasting that link between tags. There are browser add-ons to make the javascript dis-/en-able steps easier.
Pretty sure my spare is way past its expiration date. It looks like it just came from the factory, but I think it was made in 2007. The only time it has been out of the trunk is when I needed to pump it up. At the gas station. Because the stem on the silly thing is positioned so that a bike pump will not clamp onto it. Come to think of it, I once looked for a spare for this Prius, out of curiosity, and they were stupid expensive. Just the tire, not even the rim. Which brand/model have any of you bought?
Spares tend to last longer because they never see sunlight. But they still don't last forever. I had this same type of valve stem failure on one of our tires a few weeks ago. The repair shop did not charge me anything, claimed it was too much paperwork for too little work.