Screw inside a wheel

This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.

Last Saturday I was doing a short paramedic duty. When I was finished I went to my car and wondered why it was telling me that there is low pressure inside the tires.

Since it is winter a low-pressure warning normally isn't something bothering me, because if the temperature is below zero degrees C, the air shrinks, thus producing the low-pressure warning.

But I wasn't entirely convinced that was the problem. I drove out of the garage where my car was parked during my duty, stopped and took a look. The right rear wheel had only 0,7 bar of pressure. Normally I should have been at least 2,8 to 3,2 bar. Shit.

I cautiously drove to a nearby gas station to fill it up. Thinking to myself, well it could be that the valve froze over or something. Back at 2,9 bar, I drove back home.

A few hours later I thought to myself I should go and check again to see if the air was gone again. It was 0,1 bar. I sent an image of the flat tire to our family group on WhatsApp and my brother (soon to be mechanic) immediately called me.

I should put my Tesla on something so the weight wouldn't rest on the aluminium rim, as that can deform it. Easier said than done, I don't have a lifting jack and also nothing to put the car onto. No problem my brother said, he would drive to me with all required things.

We put the car on paving stones and dismounted the wheel. As it was already 10 pm there wasn't a tire shop open so I put the wheel into my Apartment s basement. On Monday I asked a coworker if he could drive me to a nearby tire shop and within 10 minutes the wheel was fixed.

A screw drew itself through the wheel thus bleeding the air out. Luckily it was easily fixable and so I had to only pay 10 euros. If I would have needed to replace the tire (well, normally you have to replace both on the same axis because of the wear) it would have looked at at least 400 euros.