Malta - British Expat Forum

Took the family this afternoon to Splash and Fun, arrived about 3pm (cheap rate) had some fun for 3 hrs with the baby having a wail of a time in the kiddy pool and the 12 year old doing what they do.

Upon coming out i noticed the front drivers side tyre looked a little flat actually totally flat, so i say no problem ill get the spare , i marched around to the boot and opened it and preceeded to pull out the punctured flat, the bloody garage who sold me car sold me it with a punctured flat tyre. So next port of call was roadside assitance which came with my insurance , guy turns up about 30 mins after the call which was good then informs me he can tow me to a garage of my choice but there wont be any open, he also offered to tow me to Rabat but i didnt want to put the kids in the tow truck especially as our baby has issues with travel sickness. The mechanic really wasnt very forthcoming in where i should leave the car , i think he just wanted to be at home. So i said i would leave the car where it was and get a tyre fixed in the morning and come back and change later . I squared with spalsh and fun it was ok to leave the car there for the night. The mechanic then told me i had to pay the €14 Tow charge because they hadnt done any work on the car i was somewhat bemused and he phoned the office and the lady explained saying that they had to do something, if they had fixed my car if it was a mechanical fault there would have been no charge ???? wierd hey. But as there was nothing to fix and it was supposed to be a tow job thay still had to charge even though i was not being towed.

Any way I phoned my Superaunt !! who told her husband to get his arse over to us which he did, we tried stick some air in the tyre but it was a huge puncture, we even tried fitting his spare to my car but it just wasnt the right size, so we packed all our stuff into his car included one of the flats and brought us home 2 and a half hours after we expected to be home.

In conclusion always check your spare is in a good state !!!

It's no fun having one , let alone two, flat tyres especially with kids onboard.

Would suggest that you and other members keep a lookout for those aerosol cans which seal and re-inflate flat tyres. Keep it in the boot or glove box as a 'get you home' solution, (though a pumped up spare is definitely much better)

Good advice, i have one of these on board, although the last puncture i had i could have put the can through the hole the crater left in the tyre.

This is one of those things I am a bit scared about when on my own in MAlta. DH will continue to work abroad so it will just be me and DS and although I know the theory of changing a spare I doubt I could actually do it in practice, I guess I had better get some practical experience in before we move then as I keep hearing about how many punctures everyone gets. Must be good work being the equivalent of Kwik Fit over there. Steady work. I am going to go and investigate one of those aerosol thingies I have never heard of and make sure we always have roadside assistance. Oh and a spare without a hole, I don't think I would have thought to check that. I am not even sure you always get a spare these days which seems odd to me. Thanks for the heads up all.

BW, I would also recommend that as a 'lone female' trying to change a wheel you might want to invest in an extendable wheel brace. (Normally cost around a tenner or less in UK.)

It's basically a two piece 'L' shaped bar with a socket on the end to fit the wheel nuts and needs less force to loosen/tighten when changing a tyre. Your DH should know what I'm talking about.

Cheers Bob, I think we might have one of them already, we have many wonderful things in our garage/workshop, it seems to be growing all the time. Popping into town now and might take a detour past motoring type store and get one or two of those aerosol thingies. Think they sound a great invention and had never heard of them before. I do rather leave the technical sort of stuff to the engineer of the family normally. And that is certainly not me.

Only 1 thing I would say : don't use [/]cheap car tyres[/url]

Only one thing I would say - don't spam

...or gravedig.

Thanks, Mark. You'd think they'd get the message, but it appears not.

getting back to the point of the thread DH was shaking his head at me not knowing about the aerosol thingie, cos we had them in the last car instead of a spare apparently. Ooops. Well Halfords isn't my idea of a fun day out.

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Halfords isn't my idea of a fun day out

Erk!



Every time we used to walk down our local High Street in the UK, Dave had to do everything he could to distract me so I wouldn't see the Halfords shop. "Oooh! Look at that bird over there!" "Would you like to go into this book shop?" Anything, really, so I wouldn't notice Halfords and start yawning.

It's not anything to do with whether they're a good shop or not, it's just that the stuff they sell bores me senseless.

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Ooops. Well Halfords isn't my idea of a fun day out.

Do what Suzy does.... she sends me to look in the tool / motoring section of our local supermarket (which stocks these aerosols) whilst she spends twice as long browsing in the wine cellar