Festiva front tires.

I felt lot vibration develop in what seemed right (passenger) front side of Festiva. Pulled the wheel and looked like bit tread separation. fine, put on the spare. Ordered cheapest new tire I found in size I needed on Ebay. With spare started out ok then more and more vibration. Made it home and felt around both front tires. The spare on right seemed ok. Felt the one on left (drivers side) had large bulge. Fine, ordered a second tire to match the other one I ordered. I havent tried driving it with the spare on right and the new tire on left yet. Need to. Second new one to be here Thursday. At least tires will match on front.

The bad tires were Kumho Solaris. Interesting these Westlake tires (made in Thailand) have exact same tread as the Kumho. The Kumho tires dont have THAT many miles, but were aging out. And tread wearing. No matter what they claim, never seen any 12in or 13in tire that lasted more than 10k to 15k miles on front wheels of a front drive car.

Got that second tire today. For life of me, couldnt get tire beads to seat on the rim. Usually if you can get one side seated, its easy to push the rim to get other side. So tried duct tape, nope. tried plastic grocery bags, nope. Tried an old 20in bicycle inner tube, nope, too big.

Finally thought of that plastic cling wrap on roll sold for food. I had generic roll that I was never that fond of as it had bad tendency to cling to itself before I could wrap any food with it. So put several layers of that on rim on rear side. Bingo it was enough, the tire seated. Once both beads seated, I unseated the rear bead and pulled out the plastic. Since the front bead still seated, could just push rim enough forward it would take air without the plastic.

I dont remember what it cost, but it was Aldi generic stuff and couldnt been more than $2 or $3 and I didnt even use that much of it. Got to thinking wet rags might seal enough if I didnt have any plastic wrap. But the plastic is no fuss, no muss. The wet rags would be messy.