I am wondeing just how many flats our cars get??
#1 How many flats have you had on your Z ??
#2 Do you know how many miles on the tires before you had a flat ??
#3 Or miles between flats ??
#4 What caused it ??
#5 What did you do?? A: Fix it on the road.. B: Call AAA.. C: Have it towed ?? D: Call a friend wth I need ??
#6 How far away from home ??
#7 If no flats how many miles have you drove ??

 

14 years spread over my C4 and C5Z (maybe 50k miles) and only 1 flat and it was all my fault. Ran over a 4x4 that fell off the back of a truck in front of me. Managed to swerve and miss the front but it hit the back tire. I was going around 75mph. Superficial dent on the wheel (ZR1 17x11). Everything looked fine other than that so I drove it, a week later I found that the camber adjustment had been knocked all to hell, I found this out because the tire popped as I was pulling into a gas station.

As this was a C4 I just slapped on the little space saver spare and drove home. The point of this story is that in the intervening week I drove a car with max neg camber very very hard and over 100mph many times before it finally failed. The handling felt unsettled but not as horrible as you might think. Point is, getting a modern tire to fail is really a lot of work, even with nails in them and such you can usually drive slowly to a place to get it repaired until you can buy a new set of tires for that end of the car.

I have the tire repair kit for my C5Z but to be honest I am just going to buy can of that fix a flat stuff that is non gooey/messy. I just need to research and find out which brand it was again. I get a little leak I will hit it with that and drive it home and call Tire Rack. Just my .02.

btw, the '89 and later space savers from the C4's are aluminum, very small and fit over big brakes. If you were really a worrier you could just put one in the spot in the trunk of the Z and use it if you got a flat. Just keep it in a plastic bag for looks reasons and also to put the tire that went flat in since it will be on your front seat or floor since I dont think they will fit through the small C5Z trunk opening. I use the race heim jointed end camber bars on the C4 now.

 

In two years I've had one flat with about 25000 miles on the tires. It was caused by a nail that don't remember driving over. The air didn't go out until I had gotten back home and it sat in the garage all night. When I discovered it the next day I just put some fix a flat in it and drove it to the tire shop. Easy as can be

 

I drove my C4 for 100k with no flats. When I got my C5 it needed two rear tires. One had a screw in the sidewall and the other had a rip in the sidewall (curb rash). Neither one was leaking.

In 30k with the C5, I did get a screw in one rear and it didn't leak for months. As long as it wasn't leaking I wasn't going to pull it out to see if it went all the way in. It just started to leak when I got to the tire store to get new front tires. I seem to have a small nail in the other rear tire. Its not leaking and I am not pulling it out till I have a reason (track day or leak).

 

I have done around 60 k miles on two C5's, and I have only had one puncture, which was a slow leak, and I fixed it with a plug kit - but that was on our 99 coupe and not on my Z.

I carry an inflater and a plug kit and or a GTO spare on road trips.

It worries me more on the coupe, as I have 19" rims with fairly odd sized tires on it, but I guess you gotta take your calculated risks.

best regards -

mqqn