It doesn't matter if you are going to fit a spare wheel or inject gunk into your punctured tyre, hard shoulders are extremely dangerous places to be. So many people have been killed or seriously injured by vehicles straying into the hard shoulder. In my previous employment, a memo was issued to all drivers that under no circumstances should any attempt be made to repair/replace punctured tyres on the hard shoulder of a motorway. The instruction was to get out of the vehicle, get behind the crash barrier a safe distance from the vehicle and await the arrival the AA/RAC. The recovery vehicle afforded some degree of protection with it's flashing lights but it was still a scary place to be in. Totally agree with Llanigraham, the AA and RAC will not put you to the back of the queue because you only have a puncture. In fact, attending roadside punctures where the gunk has not been successful in inflating the tyre is bread and butter to these organisations.

Some years ago when travelling from Manchester to Glasgow, I got a puncture on the motorway just outside Bolton. I called the AA and they were on the scene within 20 minutes. Although the gunk failed to repair the puncture, the kind man from the AA drove me to the nearest Kwiik Fit, waited with me until the tyre was replaced and then drove me back to my car and fitted the new tyre.

Just had a puncture in my Yeti which has only 10,000 miles on the clock.  Put in the sealant and inflated tyre to correct pressure  drove it for around 10 minutes.  Re-checked pressure and found that it had almost halved. I  used the electric pump to re-inflate, careful not to use for more than the stated 8 minutes.  Pump started to stop/start and then smoke came out!  So not only is the gunk useless the supplied pump is also not up to the job!!  

 

Shame on Skoda for supplying such a rubbish kit. I understand now that these repair kits are only good to fix small holes.  Having said that my tyre  seemed to go down over  a distance of around 15 miles, which suggests a smallish leak?. Given that mankind sent a man to the moon a few decades ago, you would have thought that by now we could make a sealant that works.  The RAC who got me to a tyre depot did not have any thing good to say about sealants either!  Apparently there is only about a 15% chance that a sealant will work, so my view is that spare wheels should be mandatory until someone actually produces gunk that works.  Even then that will not solve the problem of a totally shredded tyre.  I just ordered some Slime in the hope that will work better (has proved effective on my Mountain bike!)

 

I think Skoda should recall all vehicles with tyre sealant and charge us only for what the spare wheel cost as an optional extra. No stop! I think they should provide it free as it is not an 'option' it is an essential!!!!!!!

No stop! I think they should provide it free as it is not an 'option' it is an essential!!!!!!!

 

Welcome.

A good rant for a first post.

 

Whilst I might agree about the pump, but having never used it even that I'm not sure about that, what I do think is a bit OTT is the last sentence, as above.

 

By my calculation I have done probably over a quarter of a million miles since I last had a puncture, so although I do have a spare I certainly don't consider it so "essential" that I would expect it to be provided free just because of a few peoples problems.

 

The only reason I have one is so that whilst I'm towing abroad I won't be stuck trying to get a tyre urgently, because Sod's Law states that the one time I will have a puncture will be on the way to the ferry.

 

And have you considered the following:

Are you going to make every other manufacturer in Europe provide FREE spare wheels on their vehicles? It doesn't apply to just Skoda you know.

Have you considered that if they had to fit spare wheels to the Greenline models it would put them up into the next tax band? So you want people to pay the extra VED then.

Hardly any manufacturer puts a spare in these days unless ordered at the time of manufacture. They do this to not only save money, but mainly to save weight so the car "appears" to have better emissions. Look at the number of manufacturers going back to twist beam rear suspensions on 2 wheel drive cars again to save weight. They are also saving money with a less complicated set up, less to go wrong etc. I am beginning to think this low emissions thing is another massive green scam, as are wind turbines and the rest

 

Have you considered that if they had to fit spare wheels to the Greenline models it would put them up into the next tax band? So you want people to pay the extra VED then.

 

That's apparently the reason why so many cars come with a useless bottle of gunk, the small effect it has on the emissions classification (how is that calculated btw?). Personally? I'd be quite happy to pay the extra VED if it meant my car was better equipped.

 No stop! I think they should provide it free as it is not an 'option' it is an essential!!!!!!!

 

But they would then also have to reimburse all the people who had paid to have a spare wheel rather than a can of gunk?

 I'm pleased my Yeti has a spare. But without wishing to tempt fate, have to say that it's steel spare remains untouched and pristine, with the car having covered 84,000 so far.

 

 

Conversely and to give some balance my steel spare lasted less than 300miles from collecting my FL model before having a side wall rip that no gunk on earth could have fixed. Luckily like you FlintstoneR1 I had opted for the spare.   

No spare for me.

Because of my disability, I wouldn't be able to change it even if I did.

I can't say I'm happy with the goo though.

I think they should supply a dry plug kit instead, but the main problem with that is finding the hole with the wheel fitted to the car.

No spare in the BMW - Runflats. Bought a kit for the octavia -wheel boot clamp, and polystyrene insert with jack etc and put winter wheel in the summer and summer wheel in in the winter and glad I did after going back to the car with a rear flat tyre.