Mini spare fits Prime?

I've had 3 flats in my 2019 Prime in only 17,000 miles of ownership. Been stranded away from home and had to be towed once, the other two times I found the car in my garage sitting on a flat when I went to drive somewhere. All three were nails or wood screws in the tread. I am going shopping tomorrow for a wheel and full size tire from a salvage yard. I've had it with the car not having a spare and being constantly worried about picking up a nail. I'll carry it behind the passenger seat, I guess, or in my Thule cargo pod when I am on a long road trip and have the pod installed.

 

I found going to a hardware store to be the riskiest. About one flat per ten visits. Now I carry:

• 12V air inflator (keep tires at max sidewall pressure)
• sticky string plug kit (takes upper body strength!)
• needle nose vice grips and razor knife

I found tire shops are too willing to claim, "Too close to sidewall" which is offen nonsense. A true sidewall puncture is very rare,

When possible, drive by shops or divided highway with center barrier and the window cracked. Listen for the "click click" before the screw or nail gets deep enough to cause grief. Stop as soon as practical, feel the tire, and removed the offending object with the needle nose, vice grips.

REMINDER: Cold weather 'deflates' the tires so top them off in the Fall.

Bob Wilson

 

Did you consider compact spare as well? It’s lighter, and well: more compact.

There’s an area in our nearby lumber/hardware store where they’d stockpile lumber. It was wrapped in tarps secured with long staples, that were punched through small plastic “washers”.

Anyway, I guess they just yoink those tarps off the lumber when breaking up the load, and you have these staple/washer combos strewn EVERYWHERE, about half of them with the washer at the bottom and the staple tines pointed skyward.

 

I've been to Home Depot about 10 times in the last 2 weeks (doing several home improvement projects). I suspect I've been to a hardware store over 1,000 times in my life, and I've never once had a flat from that. In fact, I've never once had a flat from a nail or screw. Slow leaks that required tire repair, but no flats.

 

Flats are a rare event, at least for me. But when it happened, most of the time the fix-a-flat sealant would not have fixed them. Three flats I had to deal with on the road on my or my family's car in the past 20+ years are all sidewall punctures. The most recent one on our PathHy a 2 years ago with sidewall damage from the curbstone. I have not had a flat on PP yet, but I carry a full-size spare in the rear seat footwell just in case. It is extremely rare that I need rear seats for people, so it works for me. A full-size tire is more securely wedged in place without strapping it. Besides, it can be used permanently for a long trip at highway speed, unlike the temp donut spare. And it costed less than buying a temp tire for Prius.

 

Correct, slow leaks. Only had one flat from construction zone debris in 1980s and a blowout in 1967.

Bob Wilson

 

Wow, you have quite a listing of skills/knowledge, but for the record, (even though 'rims' seems to be in the vernacular these days), it is quite incorrect even as shorthand to call a whole wheel a rim, dude!

From Google, et al..."Many people use term "wheel" as a "rim" meaning the entire metal part to which the tire is mounted because rim and wheel are usually cast or pressed from a single piece of metal. The main difference between wheel and rim is that rim is not the whole wheel but only a part of the wheel."

 

The rim of the wheel?

 

My experience with my prime without spare, happened on I5 south of Seattle, lucky for me wsdot came to my rescue

 

Again what space saver spare fits the prime

 

Any compact spare used for Gen3 or Gen4 Prius would work. If you can find one cheap from a junkyard or eBay, you can go that route. I suspect Gen2 Prius and some Collora, Matrix compact spares are also compatible, but not 100% certain.

As for the "space saving" feature of those compact spares which is just slightly narrower than the full-size tire, it does not save much space on the back. It is the same diameter as the "full size", and takes just as much footprint placed on the deck. Placed behind the front seat, the compact spare is actually too loose to be secure. I suggest getting a full-size tire 195 65r15 with compatible steel after-market 15" wheel as I commented in my comment #45.

 

I used the spare off of my gen 2 on my corolla hybrid, used stainless aircraft tie wire and a power supply to cut the styrofoam insert.

 

For your retrofitting, a compact spare can be made to fit under the deck. Unfortunately, Prius Prime has no space under the deck where the larger traction battery sits. So, any spare, compact or full size has to sit on the top of the deck or better in the footwell of the rear seat. For that reason, for PP, the compact spare tire does not offer space-saving but severely limits the usability because of the max limit of the 50mph or 50miles distance traveled. With a full-size spare, I can continue to travel on an interstate at a speed limit of 75mph without looking for a tire shop within 50 miles distance.