Plugs for Run Flat Tires? Some Houston Hiking? the '27 Kia Telluride first look!

Quick Welcome And Setup

Thanks for being with us today. Time now for Jeff's car culture. Run flats. Can they run with plugs?

Can they? Well, let's check it out. First of all, run flat tires are an increasingly common type of tire on passenger cars. Manufacturers like BMW or the high-end vehicle producers, manufacturers, are mounting them on cars instead of equipping them with spare tires. Doing so saves weight and space, plus run flat tires are considered both safer and convenient to run than standard tires. If there is a puncture, the air escapes from the tire. The tire is designed not to collapse, but to ride the weight of the car on that sidewall, so sudden decompression would not lead to the driver losing control, which makes sense. Modern cars have tire pressure monitors that warn the driver to slow down if a pressure drops. Now mine did that when I had my flat, it the light came on, it dinged, and you could feel it going down. So here we go. The safety and convenience of run flats come at a cost of construction that is different than the normal tires. They are more expensive to produce. If a normal tire is punctured and the resulting hole is not too large, the tire can be repaired with a plug. Run flat tires, though, are a different story. So here we go. Run flat tires construction is based primarily on the idea that a short, thick sidewall can support the tire, share the weight of the car for at least a little while. Although the ability to operate one as the airscaped is dependently partly on whether the rupture is located. Is it in the sidewall? Is it in the tread area? A hole in the tread surface is more likely, and that is what the tire is designed to handle. A slash to the sidewall may compromise the performance. You've got some pictures there of how that actually is supposed to work and carry the load. Regardless of where the tire has been penetrated, the result is that the sidewalls of the tire are supporting the entire weight that the pumped up tire is supposed to hold. The stress placed on the sidewall is much greater than normal. It is not impossible for run flat tires to be able to continue functioning. There is a place in Europe, it's called or the product in Europe is called a Phenobell. It's a bulletproof tire rating that calls for it to run even after the sidewall has been pierced with a 7.62 millimeter bullet. However, for civilian run flats, any decision to patch a tire needs to be taken up and reviewed with the condition of the sidewall and the person that's going to do the patch or patch plug. It is physically possible to plug a run-flat tire if there is a puncture in the middle of the tread. A technician certified to work on run-flat tires should check the tire and determine whether it is repairable as the inspection process is different for run-flat tires than it is for a regular tire. Factors such as whether the tire is deflated completely or how fast it's gone down, how long it's been driven on, these are things that all need to be considered. Whether you should plug a run-flat tire depends partly on the manufacturer. Some tire makers, such as BF Goodrich, permit one plug or patch. Others, such as Bridgestone, mandate that the tire must have at least a 15 PSA while punctured, in other words, holding more air as it goes down. Others such as Pirelli warn that plugging a tire under any circumstances will avoid the warranty. I call hogwash on that. As the conditions are subject to change, it makes the sense of checking your tire experts the manufacturer before temp uh attempting the run flat or the plug. Now I work for Pirelli, I was a manufacturer rep. They had other issues besides run flats. Michelin was the first one that I know. Michelin and Goodyear were the first ones that I know that actually produced a run flat. Yes, they could be driven 50 miles at 50 miles per hour, but so does your Space Saver spare. So what they did was they incorporated a Space Saver spare into the daily driver tire that you have in your car because they will run 50 miles an hour for 50 miles. So uh they can be done, they're a little bit more pricey, they are a harder, firmer ride. You're not gonna get the stickiness like a uh you know a large proportion aspect ratio tire on performance car. These tires are made to run on the road and they're more of a highway tire. So uh I got run flats on the Corvette. You do, you do, and that's a good thing because you have no real spare spare. Yeah, so and that's that's the reason. And they're they're fairly new and they are pricey. Well, Mr. Mars.

Thanks for joining us today. You shouldn't miss it. Let's let's do the uh driving destinations with Mr. Mars, shall we?

Yes, sir. I think we should. So where uh where is it? It's two days. Go ahead and go ahead and go out. One of the things that you know, if if you want to go out hiking, if you're an outdoors person, sometimes you want to go out hiking just to get out into nature. A lot of people go to the Grand Canyon things, but if you can't go that far and you want to look for a place around Houston, you could go to the usual Buffalo Bio or Memorial Park Loop that you all mentioned earlier. But there are other places that might be of more interest. For example, Terry Hershey Park. Now, this is when you go there, you're gonna see the main paved hike and bike trails along Buffalo Bio. But what you want to do is get away from that and get into the informal dirt spurs that kind of go along the waterline, especially west of Beltway 8. Now, the side paths kind of dip down into narrow tree tunnels. There's root-covered banks that you've got to be a little careful on when you're walking on them. But there's a lot of bends that slow down to the almost swamp-like pools that you're gonna see that you won't see from the regular uh Buffalo Bile tracks and trails that you're going on. Now, you can also, after it rains though, you gotta watch out because parts of it's gonna feel more like East Texas than Houston. And in the mornings, if you go in the early mornings, you're gonna see some herons and turtles. You might even see some deer tracks along some of the muddy edges that actually track up. Again, you gotta be careful, don't want to slip and fall out in the middle of nowhere. Now, the second place you might look at is the Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary. Now, this is kind of hidden in the city of West, it's a morrow on the west side of Houston. It's not real big, but it's got a lot of trees that make it feel much larger when you're walking on foot. Got boardwalk sections that kind of go through the shaded creek corridors. You get a little bit of sunlight coming through, it kind of gives you a real remote feeling to it. It's very quiet. For Houston in particular, you don't hear the traffic. You can hear the birds, and you can actually hear the winds through the pine and oak trees. The loop is kind of short, so it's not something that's gonna take you all day, but you can be a nice, take you a nice slow wander on a height and uh go through it, particularly a light rain, you're gonna get some ground smells that actually will make you think you're in a forest someplace besides in Houston.

Ground smells. Okay.

Ground smells. It's better than your cat smells out of your kickbox. Anyway, so the third place you might want to look at is the Willow Waterhole Green Space. Now, this is a larger place. It's in uh southwest Houston, and it's really got its own, it's big enough to have its own ecosystem. And it's go on the trails, they wind through the retention ponds. There's several of them. You got a lot of tall grasses, open water edges that reflect the sky at the sunset. You can get some really nice colors in there. But unlike most manicured parks, it's intentionally not manicured, it's very unfussy. It's got curved paths and branches without any sort of feeling. You're kind of more wandering through, literally. Got a lot of bird activity, and on windy days, tall grasses, you can actually see it wave like you see uh like in the Midwest, out in the middle of nowhere. Number four would be Spring Creek Greenway. Now, this is Houston's uh almost wilderness corridor that you might call it. It's the closest thing to a continuous nature walking corridor in Houston proper. Now that stretches for miles along Spring Creek. You got some nice sandy soil underfoot, thick hardwood forest, and you got long stretches that where you're not interrupted with any sort of buildings or anything. It's not like a city park, because this one has real distance. You can actually get a few hours deep, and I'm talking hours walking without looping back quickly. The forest changes as you move through it from this dense oaks to pine pockets. You also have some low wetland sections that you can find, and you get to where you want to go to a scale of nature that really feels really out there. You can see some great fox, and and to be honest, this thing is listed supposedly as the longest trailing uh hiking area in the nation. It's 40 miles actually long that you can walk out through this thing. So if you get lost out there, don't do it. Uh the fifth one that I would bring up is Buffalo Bayou, of course, lost lost banks and side cut trails. Now, this is an underrated loop interwalk, as they call it. Now, most people stick to the Buffalo Bayou trails near downtown, but you get out away from that to the side banks and the feeder paths between downtown and Shepherd. There are some connections that drop you closer to the water. You get underneath the bridges. You can also get into some sun-shaded concrete and forest corridors where the city feels layered on top of itself. You know you're in the city, but you're not feeling like you're in the city. They got drainage channels, of course, there's a few graffiti walls. There's a few places you can actually go fishing and uh find some openings in the skyline to let the sun shine in to where you do again feel like you're out in nature. So it's more of a pure nature height, but it's really not out of town that far. So that's just a few of the huge, few hidden places in Houston that I was not aware of. If you're a hiker, that you can go hiking. Uh a couple of them are around town. You're gonna have to drive to get to them, but they're there.

Uh very nice. I like that. Yeah, that was a very informative. I I didn't know about all of that.

Yeah, the second one that you had when you with the had the uh the bridge with the trees around it. Do you hear any like I don't know where it's at, but I'm just imagining there's probably traffic, car traffic, maybe highway traffic around that that you would probably have to be able to do that.

Now the second one was the Edith L. Moore nature, right? And supposedly they say, which I haven't been there, but they say that you're far enough out that you do not hear all that traffic.

Okay, that's what my concern was. Okay, cool. Thank you very much.

2027 Kia Telluride Redesign Review

Now on the end we let's do the car review first, okay? Um I had an opportunity to drive the 2027 Kia telluride. Um available trim levels, the LX, the S, the EX, the SX, SX Prestige, X-Line, and X Pro. I got to drive the X Pro, SX Prestige, all-wheel drive. So these are basically trim packages, is what they are. And they name them different things, and they bundle up all these things within those trim packages, and usually it goes up the ladder to the top line trim called X Pro. So there you have it. Um this is considered a standard SUV. Uh seats up to seven passengers, a three-row. Uh this is a complete redesign for 2027. Sharp looking, blunt nose with a distinct lighting pattern up front, symmetrical wheel well openings with slab sides, rear vertical lighting, takes cues from the front lights. Um big wide rear hatch that swallows up everything. Kind of good looking, actually. Uh what I like, I love the beautiful design execution. We could use improvement, nothing. Um overall, it gets high marks for the design of this thing. Looks it looks really cool, I think. Interior highlights. Our top-of-the-line X Pro uh interior trim and seat coverings are top-notch all the way. Uh now there's more leg room in the back seats, thanks to a longer wheelbase with this redesign. Dual phone chargers, that was interesting, right up front, up there on the center console, and big in-console cup holders are handy as well. Uh, huge instrument and infotainment screen, one of the best that I've used. Uh cargo trunk room is kind of small with the third row up, as you would expect. What I liked about it, uh the design is modern, clever, and unique. I think that you'll really like it. What could use improvement? We couldn't think of anything. If you're in the market for something like this, definitely put it on your list. If you're in the market for a suburban, this is something that would be a competitor to that. Now, here's a hitch that may be uh uh strike against it. 2.5 liter turbo four, a four-banger, 274 horsepower. Might be a little low on power for as big as it is and how much weight it hauls. Uh torque, 311 pound feet, eight-speed automatic transmission, 5,000 pound tow rating. Can't imagine it, but 17 miles per gallon in the city, 22 on the highway for a combined of 19. I got 22.5 miles per gallon over 467.8 miles. What could use improvement? The transmission downshift is slow uh to meet our needs. It needs more revs uh to be able to do that as well. So I think that they need to do a little bit more tweaking on the transmission. Ride and handling, smooth ride, and despite its size, easy to maneuver in the grocery store parking lot. Uh what could use improvement? Nothing. Uh we didn't uh take it off-road, but the X Pro does have off-road type tires on it and uh the tell you ride height for off-roading, if you're into that sort of thing. I don't know anybody. I don't know anybody that goes off-roading in their own. Uh so base trim price on this trim price now,$56,790. Price is tested,$59,580. That's pretty expensive. But the base model price is$39,190. So you can get into one of these things for under$40,000. Competitors? Hyundai Palisade,$39,435 is where it starts.

I had a question about that. Go ahead.

Honda Pilot,$42,500. A Honda's always been more expensive than most of its competitors. And the Mazda CX90 is also a competitor. It starts at$38,800.

The the when you said Palisades, I was thinking of the Palisades when I saw the back picture of that vehicle, uh, tell you ride Palisades. To me, they kind of blend together. And you also stated that it's up against competition of the suburban. Is it that large? It says that I was wondering.

It it yeah, it is. It's it this is a big vehicle, and it's called a standard SUV, which throws it in the same category as a suburban. That too is a standard SUV. I would think Tahoe, but suburban is a big, big truck. It's big. It's uh three rows of seating, so and that's what this is. Well, let's do your