Things that puncture your tires will cause flats. But, a McCullom Lake winter can cause a  flat tire, too.

Maybe, when you pulled out of your McCullom Lake driveway, you ran over a nail. That would explain why you have a flat tire now. You could have run over a screw, a sharp piece of metal or any number of things that could puncture your tire. But maybe it was something else.

As we all know, temperatures are dropping around McCullom Lake this time of year. It’s evidence of the annual arrival of winter. And that may have something to do with your flat tire. You might even have more than one tire going flat since the culprit is affecting all the tires the same way simultaneously.

This is not a problem that your parents were as likely to face 30 years ago. So what has changed? Why would your tires have a chance of going flat when temperatures fall and not your parents?

Not that much has changed in the technology of tire manufacturing. Tires were made of rubber then and they’re made of rubber now. But something about your tires may be different than your parent’s tires from back in the day.

Here’s a clue. Thirty years ago, you might drive past a dilapidated store that did a thriving business. Their business was selling hubcaps. 

If hubcaps aren’t installed properly, they can pop off when a car takes a turn or hits a jarring bump. That’s why there were hubcap stores. Often, they had stockade fences around the business and the most common styles of hubcaps were displayed hanging on the outside of the fence. If you had lost a hubcap, you could stop and buy a second-hand hubcap for your car (possibly a hubcap that came off someone else’s car and was scavenged off the road somewhere).

The clue, therefore, is that you probably don’t have hubcaps on your car. Instead, you probably have aluminum rims. They’re more stylish. In fact, 30 years ago, if you had aluminum rims on your car, they were probably what we called mags and your car was probably a sports car.

With aluminum rims, the lug nuts have attractive chrome covers that are attached. They don’t need to be protected from the elements the way standard, simple lug nuts do. In the old days, the lug nuts would rust and get covered with dirt and grease, if they weren’t protected from the elements. They’d be difficult to remove.

Aluminum rims, with their fancy lug nuts, don’t need hubcaps. But they have one weak spot.

When winter rolls into Wonder Lake, the cold causes contraction that can break the seal between the tire and the wheel. Suddenly, a perfectly good tire, on a perfectly good aluminum rim, is going flat.

It’s not a terrible problem. Qualified auto repair shops are familiar with the problem. They’ll clean the area where the tire and wheel meet and remount the tire so that it will hold air again, all through the winter season.