Weirdest thing you ever found in a tire?

[silvan]

This is mine, hands down, by far.




It seems to be part of an automotive brake pad, with no friction material attached. It's about 5" long ear to ear, and 3/8" to 1/4" thick. The silvery, slightly chewed bit was sticking pretty far out of the tire, and I had been driving on it for a long time by the look of it (so THAT'S where the odd feeling that I had a wheel out of balance was coming from.)

Half the tread lug was ripped off, with this replacing the missing half lug. I could peel back the "flap" of the remaining portion of the lug to expose the first hole far enough to see that it went on for a little way inside the tire. I tried everything I could think of to get this out when I saw it, and other than busted knuckles and a broken screwdriver, I didn't have any luck. I had a feeling it wasn't going to puncture the tire, which was still holding a perfect 105 pounds, so I drove it another 30 miles home to let the truck's owner have a whack at it.

After he got some busted knuckles and a broken screwdriver of his own, he cut away enough tread to get a firm hold on the hole, and put a big hook through it, which he attached to his pickup, and proceded to extract this behemoth thing from the tire.

Amazingly, it ran all week, and seems only a little worse for wear. I'd rather replace the tire at this point with its missing lug, but it's not my truck, and I'll try to keep running the tire until it reaches the end of its life in a month or two. (If it doesn't blow. Who knows. It's the rear outside drive, so hopefully it will only take a mudflap with it if it does.)

I've seen a lot of stuff in tires, and I thought the screwdriver that wound up going through my tire handle first would win the prize, but we have a new champion. Not only is this the biggest piece of metal I've ever picked up with a tire, but it miraculously avoided ripping a huge gash, and causing a catastrophic deflation. This could easily have been a pile of gator bits.

I think I picked this up when I took the shoulder really hard in a panic brake check. I wouldn't have ass-ended the truck in front of me, but I would rather see I was going to miss him by 3' from the shoulder, instead of where it would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't pulled it off.

[Mack2]

In a farm tractor tire I had a gate hinge stuck about 10" into a back tire.

[Phantom433a]

1 question....wheres the car this is from? I've only found nails and bolts in my tires.

[Legodragonxp]

My third week of driving school bus I ran the duals in to the edge of a construction dig making a turn and suddenly the bus started going BoomBooMBOOM. I stopped and looked, I had wedged a rock the size of a loaf of bread between the tires.

I'm not sure what my brain was doing, but I grabbed the broom and tried to pry it out. Yeah, right. A 28,000 gvw bus wedges a rock between the tires and I try using a stick a 1/2" wide to pry it out... SNAP. They ended up having to pull the outside tire off to remove it.

The wierdest thing I ever found IN a tire was a bicycle pedal with the shank wedged between the tread. Kids in south minneapolis used to throw bikes under the wheels of trucks and buses to try to con the drivers in to giving them money or they'd report it as hit and run. The cops in our area just said to ignore them.

-Lego

[Sabine]

several years ago I had a shimmy in the Jeep I used to drive, due to tire balancing. One of the tires wouldn't spin balance, and they took the tire off the rim, and found my old valve stems in it. Mind you, this is the same shop that put the tires on my Jeep, just a few months earlier, and they found it hard to believe anyone would do this.....figures. Like I took the tire of the rim and stuck them in there

[Jackrabbit379]

Texas is known for it's fine mesquite trees. :P I dont know how many mesquite thorns I've gotten from driving on pasture ground.

[silvan]

1 question....wheres the car this is from? I've only found nails and bolts in my tires.

The truck in my little avatar picture. It was in the rear outside drive on the passenger side. I've put 10,000 miles on that tire so far, and it's still OK, believe it or not.

[Phantom433a]

One of the tires wouldn't spin balance, and they took the tire off the rim, and found my old valve stems in it. Mind you, this is the same shop that put the tires on my Jeep, just a few months earlier, and they found it hard to believe anyone would do this.....figures. Like I took the tire of the rim and stuck them in there

You know darn well thats what you did and you can't denie it

[Rabbit one]

In worked for General Tire a long time ago, We had a customer come in with a very out balanced tire. We found a spark plug insulator and most of the steel intact and most of the threads worn off, but not leaking any air. :shock:

[driver2]

Just a couple of weeks ago when we parked to go home, hubby noticed a trailer tire flat....we go back to check and lo and behold, there was a deer bone imbedded through our tire, cut two belts.................needed to replace the pratically brand new tire :x :x :x

[ActionEarthMover26]

found a sickle section off of a swather in the steer tire :shock:

[Radaremtjcw]

i found a 5/8" box wrench in a trailer tire , still got it

[Uturn2001]

Wierdest thing I ever seen come out of a trailer tire was concrete.

Was working for Swift at the time and was picking up a trailer from the Laredo yard and the policy was all trailers that came back from Mexico had to be inspected by the shop before pulling out with them.

I went into the shop to arrange for the inspection and they were pulling some really nasty tires off a trailer. The shop manager asked me if I wanted to see something really wierd and showed me the concrete on the inside of several tires.

Don't ask me how they got it in there, and if I had not seen it I would never have believed it.

[Mr. Ford95]

Musta been some new balancing compound Uturn.

[Windwalker]

Two trucks from my company were parked at a rest area in MN. No, we weren't going to the same place, but we were parked there for the night. In the morning, I left before he did. Did my walk around and didn't see anything unusual, and left. Got down to MO, and got pulled around back. LEVEL 3...

Check the lights, horns... Then he goes around to thump my tires. Gets to the right steer and I see his shoulders bouncing. Before I know it, this stern DOT is laughing like a fool. Finally, he waves me over.

On the sidewall of my steer tire are a bunch of "SPIKES" sticking out. Looking down a little closer, THEY'RE PORCUPINE QUILLS. And, he was not the only one that had never seen a tire with them stuck in. I tried to pull one out, and my fingers slipped off. And, as hard as he was laughing, the level 3 was over too.

When I got back to the yard, quills still sticking out, the other driver saw them.

"So, you're the one that ran down that porcupine. One of the other guys tried to pick it up by the tail and throw it away, and got his hand all stuck full just like your tire. We had to have an ambulance come to the rest area and take him to the hospital to have them taken out."

The shop didn't change that tire either. I had quills sticking out of my tire for about 8 months.


But the one I'm still trying to figure out is one of the other guys... When the shop broke down one of his steers to replace it, they found a used comdom inside. As far as I know, to this day, no one has any idea how it got in there.

[ICS]

about 6 months ago I stopped for a bite and in the tire of this 4 wheeler was a set of keys. one of the keys punctured threw the tread and the rest where dangling from the tire. She must have just picked it up in the parking lot. I thought that was pretty amazing.

[stormothecentury]

I had a screw in a tire one time.




It was a little cramped, but she didn't seem to mind.






Seriously, though, my ex-girlfriend's mother was an absolutely terrible driver. My g/f and I were at her place when she got home one day, complaining of a weird sound in the front of her car. I went out to see if I there was anything obvious, and it turned out that she'd hit a cone in a construction zone, and somehow lodged it between her tire & fender wall. And then driven with it like that for a good 15-20 miles.

[Fredog]

Just a couple of weeks ago when we parked to go home, hubby noticed a trailer tire flat....we go back to check and lo and behold, there was a deer bone imbedded through our tire, cut two belts.................needed to replace the pratically brand new tire :x :x :x

.
how do you know it was a deer bone??

[jonp]

How about a Hammer? I ran over one in a parking lot and went down the road for a ways and noticed this weird thumping noise so pulled over to check it out. The hammer was stuck into the tread with the claws driven in. Tire didnt lose air, though. I must have struck it just right for that to happen. Tied a piece of rope to it and the frame and moved a few feet to pull it out and went to a garage to get it fixed, still didnt lose air but not taking a chance on it!

[Mr. Ford95]

2 months ago found a little metal sliver in a drive tire. Wasn't leaking but was sure odd, looked like a minature shank. It was only about an inch and a half in length. The odd part was I seemed to pick it up after delivering to a site where they refurbish military vehicles. The running joke for the company was that it was shrapnel from Iraq. With it's shape and small size and where I was delivering, very possible it was a piece of shrapnel that feel off a tank or humvee that was brought in for refurbishing.