In the north, compact cars
are as rare as Sierra Club members. Even at the Honda dealership, they
said they didn’t have any tires for a Fit, in my case, a Bridgestone
185/55R/16. He said he doubted if anybody else in town did. - Pete McMartin - Vancouver Sun
Note: When it comes to increasing the mileage per litre ..........
One surprising Thing Automakers are eliminating from cars: The Ford Focus and Honda Fit don't come with a spare in Canada, but they do in the U.S.
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The "Sea to Sky Highway" hasn't always been a highway, it was a logging road frequented by surveyors in Land Rovers, and other four-wheeled vehicles, all equipped with winches. Then there was the weekend motorists looking for a different route out of Metro Vancouver, a less traveled way to
Lillooet, Williams Lake, Gang Ranch, which included jarring potholes. In all instances, they had a Spare Tire, a jack, and a Tire Wrench.
The road was wide enough, and plenty of pull outs too, but the bridges on that route were built with the least amount of wood "pavement"; two hefty side by side planks in way of the wheels.
In 1973, there was one enterprising young woman driving down from Lac La Hache to attend her first day at University of British Columbia (Engineering???) when she came to the Historic
Hat Creek Ranch crossroad. Nearer Cache Creek than Clinton.
Turn left to # 1 Highway's Fraser Canyon to Hope and Vancouver beyond, or go to the right via "Highway 99" (Whistler didn't exist)(neither did the highway) but there was the logging road.
To the Right she traveled in the used 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, smooth driving, no problem for the first hour and half until she encountered the first of SEVEN bridges. She discovered quite quickly that the wheels on her car were too close together for the two wide apart double planks, and her vehicle tires were to wide to fit on one side of the doubled wide planks.
Then she got a bright idea, (Engineering???) the wheels were cupped in, she took each tire off and flipped them over, the wheels were then cupped out, she then made the short drive across the bridge got out her jack again and flipped the wheels back, and she was off .... to the next bridge.
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Why oh why would a professional journalist like Peter McMartin start out on a trip from Metro Vancouver without even doing a cursory check of the tread on his tires?
No spare tire, no donut spare either.....
Turns out that the donut is alright to use, but not over 80km/h, nor are they permitted on the front of a front wheel drive vehicle in Snow and Ice road conditions. Then there's the theory that because the diameter of the donut is smaller than the REAL tire, the transmission can be damaged, therefore the donut has to be moved to the back wheel axel......
Google Search Criteria:
Ft. St. John Tire shops McMartin is one of the hits.....
LONG LAKE PROVINCIAL PARK, ALTA. — In Fort St. John, we noticed the front right tire on our Honda Fit was bald. Dangerously so. I started
looking around town for a replacement.
In the north, compact cars
are as rare as Sierra Club members. Even at the Honda dealership, they
said they didn’t have any tires for a Fit, in my case, a Bridgestone
185/55R/16. He said he doubted if anybody else in town did.
Fort
St. John has plenty of tire shops. They are nothing like those in
Vancouver. They have tires with circumferences as large as redwoods,
tires that are, literally, larger than my Honda Fit. Even if they did
have a tire our size — as every one of the half-dozen shops we tried
told us — they were so busy they wouldn’t be able to put it on for at
least a week. One guy said three weeks. The last shop we tried, a
Fountain Tire, the guy said there might be something in Dawson Creek, an
hour’s drive away. We decided to give it a try. ......
