I ordered new tires for my wifes Mazda Protege 5 last week from tire rack. Delivered to my door on Friday. Mounted and balanced Saturday. Parked the car until work Monday (tire shop is 3/4 mile away).

Monday, she calls me and says I need to check her tire pressures when I get home....

I get home, no need for a gauge to diagnose the trouble, one is flat. Has a "siding screw" in it.

Back to the tire shop for a patch ($20). His first question "how many miles are on the vehicle", I said "the tire has about 50 miles on it, the car has 44,000". They fix it and ask how long it was driven while low on air. Her answer "20 miles". They advise me that the inside is starting to "come apart", but it is "not that bad". Since they mounted it backwards, I had them remount it and let me see inside. It was just bad enough to replace (my opinion...it is my wife after all). So, I called Steve (Bald 54) from the tire rack yesterday morning at 9am or so. My wife just called to say there is a new tire sitting at home right now (30 hrs later). Excellent service from Steve and the tire rack crew (as always), I just hope this one makes it longer than it's predecessor.

My luck ranges from awful to merely bad......

Glad to see you received it quickly. Hope your luck improves.

Man I thought I had it bad after replacing all four of my street tires due to puncture in 8k miles

That's 200 times the mileage I got from this one.....


But it still sucks....

On a somewhat related note how do you/your wife like the Protege 5?

I am kinda thinking about one as a daily driver. Mostly because Mazda has a $2500 rebate on them and being an old model the dealers should be motivated to sell.

As much as I hate to admit it the SVT Focus is also on my list for similar reasons.

Protege 5 are known for having the rear brakes wear prematurely since the calipers will cease (Common problem) and warranty won't cover unless you pay the ridiculous $ for brake inspection every time you go in.
Also, there has been a clutch recall.
My brother and few friends all had the same problems... so just in case you not aware of them.

Funny thing that you mention the clutch recall. When I took ours in for clutch chatter (when cold), they advised me that there is no such recall. After looking at it twice, they got it to chatter and replaced the clutch, pressure plate, T/O bearing and flywheel @ 25,000 miles and for no charge.

The rear brakes have been fine, though I did change the pads at 30k (but they were not as worn as I thought, but since I had it apart by then).

Otherwise, It has been trouble free for 45,000 miles (ask me about my 2000 GTI sometime....and the Jetta). I've added a K&N filter and a B&M shifter (do the shifter) and it handles great, though it's under powered (isn't everything?).

We traded a 2000 VW Jetta GLS 1.8t for it (VW service sucks, we dumped my 2000 VW GTI VR6 about the same time). Our Mazda is a 2002.

It's not perfect (is anything?), but we like it.

Sounds like maybe you should invest in a tire pressure monitoring system for her car so she'd know immediately when it went flat and not drive any further on it.

That would cost more than the tires. And, she'd ignore it.

Since she has snow tires, I bought "summer tires" and they are relatively inexpensive Kuhmo's. The all seasons for her car seem to run considerably more (195/50-16). The other problem is, my buddy works at a tire shop part time, so I got mounting, balancing and an alignment for 2-12 packs of MGD light. But, he used an impact gun on the wheels (we need to talk about that one) and I had trouble changing the tire with a 22" breaker bar, so she would have never gotten it loose. I figure that if the warning light went off, she'd just drive it home with the light on. Since she can't change her own tires (not strong enough), she won't sit on the roadside and call me, she'd destroy the tire and rim, but she'd get home. Hopefully, I'll not have to deal with this again anytime soon.