The space saver under the boot floor is a get you home wheel, and the get you home part is doing a great deal of work in that phrase. It is narrower than the tyre it replaces, it carries a speed limit that is usually 50 mph, and there is normally a distance limit with it. It changes how the car brakes, because one corner now has a fraction of the contact patch of the other three, and it changes how the car behaves on a wet road at night in a way you will never have practised.
It has also, on most cars, been lying in the dark quietly losing pressure since the day it left the factory, so the wheel you are relying on at midnight is very likely soft. Fitting one at eleven at night, on a verge, in the rain, in order to then drive at 50 mph on a road where nothing else is doing 50, is not obviously better than staying put for half an hour. We come out through the night with the proper tyre, fit it where the car sits, and you leave on four full size wheels. The space saver goes back under the floor for another decade.
The A1306 at two in the morning is quiet right up until you are stood next to it with a flat. We are out around Hornchurch town centre and the rest of Hornchurch through the night. Old tyres leave Harold Wood, Hacton and RM11 with us, every time. You watch it happen in Elm Park, or at the kerb in Emerson Park. The RM11 postcode and a street in Emerson Park: that is enough.
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The A127 runs along the northern edge of Hornchurch and does not slow down for the hour, so a car limping along it on a space saver after dark is in an awkward position rather than a safe one. The streets around the town centre and Elm Park are a much better place to sit still and wait. We work through the night across RM11 and RM12, we bring the proper tyre, and the car leaves on four matching wheels rather than three and a compromise.
A driver on Station Lane had put the space saver on and found it barely holding air. We fitted a proper tyre and the spare went back under the floor where it belongs.
A late call near Elm Park where the driver had decided against wrestling with the spare in the dark. Sensible. The correct tyre went on the car well inside the hour.
A newer car near Hacton carried a sealant kit rather than a wheel, which is no use whatsoever against a cut tyre. We had the size on board and fitted it on the driveway before midnight.
Usually 50 mph, and it is printed on the wheel or on a sticker beside it. There is often a distance limit as well. Both are set because the wheel is narrower, the tyre is different, and the car's braking balance has changed.
Within its limits and over a short distance, it is designed for exactly that. The problem at night is that it is usually soft after years of standing, the road is wet, and everything behind you is moving faster than you now can.
Only if you are somewhere safe and genuinely comfortable doing it. On a dark verge with traffic passing it is not worth it, particularly as it will be coming straight back off to make room for the proper tyre.
Many now do not. That is not a problem here, because we carry the common car, SUV and 4x4 sizes on the van, so the answer is a real tyre rather than a canister of sealant that would not deal with a cut anyway.
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