Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Prius Flat Tire

Work has kept me so busy lately that I haven’t had time to do much of anything, so imagine my frustration when I heard that tell-tale “pop” noise coming from my rear right tire as I drove down I-405 on my way home late last night.  But the car still rode okay, so it wasn’t till I was home that I discovered this tire was not repairable.

Flat tire

Immediately I checked PriusChat and found that the best tire for a Prius is the Nokian WR, which goes for something like $160+ each at places like the Tire Factory in Redmond.   Turns out that my Prius Touring Edition has 16” wheels, which are not terribly easy to find in stock in any case.  Other people recommended the Michelin Pilot Primacy (also sold at Costco), but at $163 it actually costs about the same as the Nokian and doesn’t get as good gas mileage.  Didn’t matter, cuz it wasn’t in stock at the places I called.

Argh.  Long story short I ended up going to my favorite tire place, Les Schwab, who sold me the Toyo Proxes T1R, for about $350 for two of them, installed.  It’s a sport tire, so supposedly I’ll get better handling, but I really wanted better fuel economy.  I guess that’s the down side of the Touring Edition Prius—you end up with sport tires because nobody keeps anything else in stock.

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