Tire Experiment Success

Inasmuch as we needed to torque the lug nuts on the tire from yesterday's flat tire adventure, we decided to also determine whether the bay under the rear compartment of the minivan could hold a full-size spare by jacking up the car, removing the tire we put back on yesterday, removing the mini-spare, and trying to crank the full-sized tire into the storage bay. To our relief, the full-size tire fits just fine. That means that instead of having to find a replacement tire for the 35-year-old emergency spare, we can just buy a new wheel and four new tires, then have the left rear tire (the only one that hasn't recently gone flat) mounted on the new wheel and then stow it in place of the emergency spare. (We'd do that because we'll just get a serviceable-but-not-necessarily-matching wheel for the new spare, so for aesthetic reasons we'll put the new wheel in the spare bay.) Yes, this means we'll be carrying a bit more weight, but Lisa points out that because we almost never have the rear seat installed (we'd rather have the cargo capacity), putting a bit more weight on the rear wheels isn't a bad thing anyway.