As some of you may have read in my postings across multiple tyre related discussion threads, earlier this year I had to prematurely swap out all four original factory supplied tyres after hitting an unavoidable nasty pot hole that caused side bulges in both the front and back passenger side tyres as well as damaging my front passenger 19-inch rim. Fortunately the Dealer was able to reshape my rim back to circular true to save me the expense of buying a totally new rim and with my set of four new Continental ExtremeContact DWS06 Plus tyres, all was good in the world of my First Jag-g-g.
Fast forward, five months and 5,000 miles ... I am driving this week along a well traveled motorway entrance ramp that had literally unexpectedly just been mostly repaved the night before with fresh asphalt by the State Department of Transportation (who is not known for their excellent in road repairs). Unfortunately for me, I have a large truck tail-gating me as I spy a fresh pot hole in the underlayment road surface that had yet to paved (it seems the State DOT crew knocked off work early and didn't finish the job all in one evening) and a large chunk of concrete that was mostly in the roadway (maybe a truck had previously hit it while getting on to the motorway and flipped it to a position even more in the middle of the road?).
Real time decisions - brake hard and risk becoming an accordion from the truck behind me, avoid the concrete debris and hit the pot hole, hit the concrete and avoid the pot hole, or something in between?
I decided the latter. I was able to reduce speed while not getting crunched by the trucker behind me (although a large air horn sounded early in the morning), heard a slight Whumpf hit to my front passenger tyre where I just "kissed" a portion of the road obstacles I was trying to avoid, and thought to myself not too bad. A mile down the road I heard a slight vibration from the front passenger side of my XE and my dash tyre pressure warning light comes on. Urgh!
I pull over to the side of the road and the tyre is rapidly deflating with a sidewall gash. While the rim looked OK, I couldn't be sure. An hour later, I am at my JLR Dealer on my mini-spare to have him look at things knowing the tyre definitely needs replacing. A short while later, I get my mixed diagnosis. Yup, the tyre needs to be replaced but since I am under the limit for Continental's 12 month / 12,000 mile Road Hazard Warranty, the tyre replacement is free. My 19-inch rim is another story (which is the one that was previously damaged and reshaped to again be circularly true). Unfortunately it is out of shape again since the road hazard impact was literally exactly on the same 3-inch circumference spot as the last pot hole hit. What are the odds of that happening? Double Urgh! With the rim metal weakened twice, I have to get a new 19-inch rim.
Fortunately, my 19-inch black rim is available at the main JLR USA warehouse and can be shipped in a day. The Continental exact replacement tyre will take three days to arrive so I am temporarily in a 2021 LR Disco loaner.
I should have my XE back by next Tuesday which is fortunate since my wife is eyeing the Disco with envy given her Jeep Wrangler Unlimited is approaching 7 years old with 140,000 miles on it