Thursday, November 17, 2011

Chevy Captiva - Different Sized Spare Tyre and Wheel

Chevy Captiva - Different Sized Spare Tyre and Wheel

I searched the forum for a thread on this, but found only a small mention of this in a post and no comprehensive discussion about it. So here goes.

I've had a Chevrolet Captiva for the last 9 months. Absolutely brilliant vehicle, no issues, no complaints, runs like a bliss.

A few days back, on the highway I had a punctured tyre. As usual, I jacked up the car, and went to retrieve the spare. I had checked it while taking the delivery (and noticed that it wasn't the alloy rims put on the 4 wheels, but normal steel rim), however, hadn't noticed it properly. Now when I took it out, to my horror, I discovered that it is a different size altogether. The normal alloys are R17, while the wheel on the spare is R16. Furthermore, the regular tyres are 235/60, while the spare is a 215/70. I was visible shocked.

Having no option at that point, we fixed the spare tyre and continued. The car was riding very awkwardly, and had a pretty noticeable tilt towards one side. Also, I do not know whether its in my mind, but I feel the handling characteristics were very much different, like one side was being dragged along.

I drove very slowly the rest of the way, and thankfully nothing went wrong.

I visited the dealer at the very next opportunity, and pointed this out to him. What he told me was, this was the way the car came from the company. And since the Captiva is imported CBU, there is really nothing he can do about it. He said this was the case in some other cars as well.

I found his words very unconvincing, and told him so. Then he took me to the stock yard and showed me a few other cars, some awaiting delivery and some that were not even registered, and they all had this differently sized spare tyre.

I asked him the reason for it, and he told me something like "the original design of the car had no provision for a spare wheel, and this has been included later, hence there is not enough space to fit the regular tyre, so a smaller one has been put". I couldn't very well comprehend what he meant to say. To cut a long story short, I then asked him what I am supposed to do with a wheel that has a punctured tyre (i carried it in the boot in the previous instance), and he told me the same, to carry it in the boot, since it would fit in place of the spare wheel. I asked him what when there is a lot of luggage, or 7 people in the car. He had no answers.

I was extremely disappointed to find an irregularity of this sort in a car that cost over 20 lacs. I really don't know how to solve this issue, and any opinions and suggestions in this regard would be really helpful.

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