Imagine this: it’s a dark, rainy Friday night and I’m calmly driving home enjoying my music when suddenly my car lurches and there’s a sickening crunch as metal comes into contact with tar, separated only by a thin strip of rubber. Accompanied by this of course is having everything that isn’t bolted down getting flung around the interior of my car (myself included) and my music skipping quite wildly (go CD!).
Yep, you better believe it; a really nasty pothole swallowed my front left wheel. I won’t bore you with pictures of the damage, however, here’s a lovely scenic photo of the beast that claimed both my tyre and my rim: Pothole of Doom.

The damage:

My front left tyre is finished; it has bubbles on both sides and is clearly unsafe to drive on. The rim is warped and has a pretty large dent in the exact same place as where the tyre bubbled. Fortunately the back wheel on the same side came through unscathed even though it too went through the pothole. I guess my front wheel absorbed enough of the energy. For safety reasons my front and back wheels have been swapped as a temporary solution. There doesn’t appear to be any further damage than that done to the front wheel, though it’s certainly going to cost me enough to repair what “little� damage there is.

The result:

My existing tyres have been discontinued apparently. This means that I can’t replace just the damaged one, but I now have to replace a pair. Damn… So the tyres are going to cost me about R1330 a pop at my current quote. Damn… Add to this R2222 for a new rim and things start getting *really* pricey. Of course there’s also the obligatory balancing and alignment. That will only set me back about R250 combined, which is pretty much peanuts in comparison to the rest.

The alternative:

Get two cheaper tyres and fix the rim. I have low profile tyres, so even the cheap ones aren’t that cheap. I have official Ford rims, which I quite like, so it’s either fix it, replace the broken one, or replace all four. I’m not replacing them, as I mentioned that I quite like them and I’m not sure about repairing it, I’ve had bad experiences with “repaired� wheels as most would know if they’ve read some of my bike posts.

Well either way, it’s going to cost me a fair amount, which is the last thing I needed after just buying the thing. Oh well…

At least I know I’m not the only one going through the same thing. With camera in hand, I went back on Saturday to find and photograph this devilish pothole. I wasn’t there for more than a minute when a car went through this pothole. *Crunch* It sounds even worse being outside the car and just listening to the pothole cost people thousands in damage.

I didn’t bother counting, but in the short time I was there I’d say somewhere in the region of 10 people will be requiring new tyres and possibly rims. This was in the daytime, so the pothole was in plain sight, though you can’t really tell how deep it is (roughly 3�) from a driving position. I also watched 2 cars gutter their wheels trying to straddle the pothole, and plenty more swerve into the oncoming lane trying to go around it. Too many people have no idea where their tyres sit on the road in relation to them, nor how wide/long their cars really are (how often do you find someone parked off centre?).

The especially amusing thing were the people who clearly aren’t concentrating, namely the ones that drove straight through the pothole as if it didn’t exist even though the car in front of them just wildly swerved out the way not even second before. Granted some people have slow reactions… but seriously? This is a high-trafficked road and the cars don’t travel all that fast. Anyways, I did get to see one guy almost lose his wheel. It was looking pretty dodgy as I watched him drive off.

Pothole Location:

In Hout Bay on the section of road between the turning-circle that goes off to Constantia and Chapman’s Peak (M63 — Hout Bay Road), and the robots the head up over the mountain to Camps bay, or down to the harbour (Victoria Ave). It’s situated about 3 meters ahead of the bus stop in the turning circle direction (near Valley Road). If you don’t know where this is, just look up Valley Road in a map book.