Steering You Right with Sharon Peters: Bike Safety
Q: Do you know about vehicle racks for carrying bikes? We’ll be traveling with our bikes for the first time and want to know anything you can share, particularly about preventing theft as we’ll often be parked on city streets and wandering for a couple of hours
A: I spoke with some cyclists who gave this advice: Go to a bike store and ask the techs there (and customers) about the specific brands and features they recommend. Make sure to get a rack with integrated rack locks but also add a cable or U-lock to serve as a visible deterrent to would-be thieves who are forever on the lookout for easy prey.
Everyone says that at night, when you’re parked at the hotel, take the bikes off and wheel them into the room. Several hours of dark give seamy people time to get past theft preventers.
AWD Redux:
A nice regular reader named Stewart got in touch to say I should have made it clearer that when you have all wheel drive and one of your tires goes bad and can’t be repaired, you don’t always have to get four new tires. You often do – tread near-equality and tire size are important with AWD vehicles. Mismatched tires can result in drive train damage.
If you have relatively new tires with little tread wear and experience some non-repairable issue on one, get the tire folks to measure the tread. If you have little tread wear and they can match the size and tread pattern, replacing one tire will work.
If you have more wear, know that some vehicles are extremely touchy (Subarus are notorious); some less so on the replacement issue. Check your owner’s manual before the catastrophe occurs so you’ll know how to respond.
I’ve had two very different experiences in the last few months with my AWD: in early winter I got a nail on the very edge of a tire, so not repairable, and the tires, which had about 28,000 miles on them, all had to be replaced. Last week, I got a sidewall puncture, and this time, with only about 4,000 miles on the tires, I got to buy one (for not much money because of credit for the ruined relatively new one).
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Sharon Peters What’s your question? Sharon Peters would like to hear about what’s on your mind when it comes to caring for, driving and repairing your vehicle. Email Sharon@ctwfeatures.com.