So I was taking out the recycling just now when I noticed my MJ is sitting kinda funky.
Sure enough, I go over, and notice the front tire is flat. Okay sure, the truck’s clearly been sitting there a while, but here’s a little history on the tires:
Purchased during my move from Mb to Ab in April 2017. They accumulated about 4000km between then and when I had to transfer over my driver’s license, which meant having to cancel Mb registration, and it needs a fair bit of work to pass the out-of-province inspection, which isn’t surprising at 535,000km. So it sat there on the tires from October 2016 to May 2018 when I picked up the ZJ, and moved the wheels and tires over to it. Fast forward to about six weeks ago, and the ZJ got new tires on a different set of wheels, so these wheels and tires went back into the MJ. They were fine on the ZJ for about 8000km with no issues to speak of, and the MJ’s only been sitting on them about a month. I suppose I could’ve been oblivious because there’s been some snow, but they went from perfectly okay on a moving vehicle to dead flat in less than a month of zero movement. And when I say they, I mean it:
As I was dragging the air hose out I realized it wasn’t just the front, but the rear on the same side is also sitting on the bead.
Why is this suspicious? Well around this time last year I had a similar thing happen. Front left tire went totally flat. I filled it, it was fine for a week, then overnight it was sitting on the bead again, and I had actually been paying attention every couple days that week. Not so far as checking pressures, but I had been comparing it to the other tires.
Now we have had some big temperature changes in the last month. We’ve seen as cold as -42°C, and as high as 5°C. We’ve even had days that started at -32° and hit 3° that afternoon. Officially it’s only 2° right now but it’s definitely Tshirt weather today. And I have no other evidence to be suspicious about tampering except for the knowledge some anonymous person has complained to my landlord that we’re taking up too much parking on our street, which is totally bogus, because this is the street:
This is a normal occupation less my roommate’s Juke because she’s out, my little MJ which is currently in the driveway, and aCamaro convertible that usually lives behind the ZJ. Our property starts near the lamp post, and goes as far as the sidewalk is bare (because we’re responsible neighbours!) and there’s room to park three cars behind the blue Subaru and two in front of the silver Focus without exceeding our own property limits. Parking is fully legal down both sides of the street except for where the hydrant is (behind the Frontier, and the outcropping of rock (plus a trailhead at the hydrant) means there’s four to five houses worth of street with no houses where parking is fair game, except I’m the only one besides the camaro that ever parks there. So I’m not convinced someone would be vindictive enough about semi-permanently occupied parking spots to let air out of tires. In the summer we don’t really see more parked vehicles except for the odd couple at the trailhead, outside of long weekends where the whole town is packed with tourist vehicles, and the locals either leave town or stay at home to avoid the chaos.
It’s just weird is all, to have a tire go totally flat for seemingly no reason, after being totally fine, and then after a year, have it happen again to not just one but two of the tires do the same thing, when they’re less than two years old with under 15,000km on them.