Last September I was coming home from a Sunday afternoon drive when I heard blub-blub-blub noises coming from a truck immediately in front of me. I thought that guy really needed to get his engine and/or muffler checked. However the truck soon sped on and I was on my own...and the blub-blub-blub noises continued. Going up a hill I noticed I was having to bear down on the gas more than I should have had to. At the next gas station I looked and saw my right rear tire was flat as a flitter!

There was about a 1 1/4" gash in the sidewall that was nearly perfectly straight (see photo above). My mind drifted back to the call center...some turd burglar in another department had farted around for 10 minutes when he should have taken over a call I was transferring to him. In the end my manager got involved and contacted his manager. Later on I was back in his area and some fat little ghetto girl said, "Art! Robert said he saw you out there walkin' `round yo' car like you thought somebody done cut yo' tires!" Now, this had been a couple of months earlier but I immedately started thinking...was I being fucked with? If my tires were being cut how was I able to drive around until Sunday before this developed?

Whatever caused this, I had to pay $100 for another tire and it left my mind. Then this past Friday I was driving home when I noticed the ride getting bumpy. In a budget car like I drive the ride is always bumpy so it's hard to tell when it's something serious, until I started hearing blub-blub-blub again. The next morning when it was light I got up to inspect and yes, now it was the front left tire that was flat.

I drove it up to QuikTrip where they have free air and aired it up. Then I went over to O'Reilly Auto Parts and got some extensions. The extensions sucked; they only had about three threads on them and didn't fit well at all. I used to have some great ones but lost them when Sears put on my tires and wound up buying another crappy set of extensions similar to this shit pair. Though they were ill-fitting I figured they would do.

I got no more than three miles down the road when I began feeling the car pulling strongly to the left. It had to be the lay of the road because, of course, I had just filled the tires and checked that they were right around 32 lbs., as prescribed by the FDA, only five minutes earlier. The ride started getting ridiculous, though, and sure enough I pulled over -- the left front tire was flatter than hell!

I yanked out the air compressor hose and figured I needed to get it full enough to get home. The air thing was on there no more than two seconds before -- BOOM! -- the fucking tire blew up! Completely shredded almost all the way around, shards hanging. I smelled rubber all in the air and nearly wet myself, just glad my hearing was intact, and some Mexican guy ran out of the convenience store like he thought somebody had been shot. How the fuck did I overfill a tire that was empty?

Called a wrecker, went to Sears. While the car was on the back of the tow truck I went around it with an air gauge to prove to my dad I wasn't too retarded to use a tire gauge and air pump. Sure enough, none of the remaining tires had any more than 35 lbs. of air in them.

So I shelled out another $100 for a tire, the second replacement on a set of Michelins I had just gotten in July of 2005. I was absolutely mystified what could be going on. If my tires were being cut...I had just knelt down and looked at them before this shit happened, and they were fine! And how was I making it 32 miles away from work before this was happening if something was going on?

Got the new tire, came home, went to bed. The next morning I get up...the left rear tire, the one I got replaced in September, was flat! ???!!! Clearly there had to be some major defects with these tires, as would seem to be bared out by the testimonials on this site. Or, someone on this street had it in for me and was flattening them...why would anyone have it in for me? I got the tire aired back up and got down to Sears and asked them to check this out.

Sears said the tire was fine, no charge. The air has stayed steady as I've checked it daily, and sometimes twice daily, all this week. So what was the culprit?

I'm convinced...it was the extensions. The kind of cheap, shitty $1.50-a-pack extensions you get these days, with only three threads of room to screw on, were probably allowing air to escape. I've taken all of those off and put the caps back on. I have to wonder how many of those people registering complaints about multiple blowouts are suffering hundreds of dollars worth of bills caused by the same shitty $1.50 item?

The preceding consumer advisory has been brought to you by Art's Bar & Grill. To read more about it, consult with your local librarian.