Puss in (new) Boots
Our Rover Coupé ‘Tomcat’ gets a new set of tyres, following an unwelcome car park discovery
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 367 Total mileage 96,046 What’s gone wrong Tyres are old (and one’s gone flat altogether)
CHRIS HOPE Having signed all the paperwork needed to officially add JBU to the CCW fleet, I had concluded, on the drive back to Peterborough, that its inability to keep rain out of the cabin was the most pressing issue to be addressed. The Tomcat, on the other hand, had other ideas.
As I wandered over to it in the car park, earlier this month, I noticed that one of its tyres was almost completely flat. Then I remembered that managing editor Sadlier and staff writer Calderwood had put the Rover through its paces over lunch the previous day. Now, I’m not pointing fingers, nor am I suggesting that the Tomcat was subject to gratuitous hoonage, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there might be a direct correlation between the previous day’s events and the sorrylooking Rover in front of me. Ahem. Either way, it was just as well that JBU decided to reveal its slow puncture when it did; I had obviously checked the tread on all four tyres – a pair of reasonably treaded (7mm) Mohawks at the front, with a Firestone and a Dunlop on the rear, both with just 3mm of tread remaining – before handing over our hard-earned cash, but hadn’t appreciated just how old they were. With JBU up on ramps at our local tyre fitter, Concorde Auto Centre, however, one of its technicians informed me that the youngest tyre on the car was 11 years old. I had been toying with the idea of replacing all four tyres anyway, but this bombshell effectively made the decision for me.
Considering the big mileage drives awaiting the Tomcat in the near future, we bit the bullet and invested in a full set of Avon ZT-5 185/75 R15 tyres.
Access to Concorde’s two-post lift also meant that I could have a decent poke around the Tomcat’s undercarriage. As I’d hoped for on a car that’s spent the last ten years in dry storage, there’s only minor surface corrosion; everything else looks solid.
The wheel nuts, on the other hand, were quickly frustrating Concorde’s staff; not a single one had been torqued up correctly and a couple were actually cross-threaded. All were eventually safely removed without damage, but it took an age.
With the wheels off the car and the ancient rubber consigned to the bin, Concorde used a rotary tool to clean each wheel’s mating edges to a smooth finish before applying tyre sealant to guarantee an air-tight seal. Then it was on with the new Avon tyres before the wheels were refitted – correctly, this time, obviously.
I’ve always suspected that any feeling of improvement after fitting new tyres to a car is something of an illusion, but honestly, the Rover drives 100 per cent better now that it’s rolling on quality rubber – which is saying something, because the ride quality wasn’t exactly poor even when it was still wearing its old boots.
Either way, with a potential crisis averted, I can finally turn my attention to sorting the Tomcat’s most pressing issue – making its rather leaky T-bar roof watertight again!