There are lots of ways for cars to get damaged in a parking lot. Inconsiderate sub-humans, debris, flooding, inconvenient lightning strikes, that sort of stuff. However, I’ve stumbled upon an unusual one. Yesterday, it got warm in Toronto, and that caused a funny thing to happen to some bitumen used to fill an imperfection in a frequented parking lot.
See, after cranking out articles all day, I returned to my Boxster to find the bitumen patch I parked on got hot enough to go all gooey and let my left front tire sink right down to the asphalt beneath. Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh no. Gently easing the Boxster back about two feet pulled a solid chunk of parking lot patch up off the surface, firmly attached to the tire. Frantically, I got to scraping, removing roughly a baseball-sized amount before realizing that this sticky stuff had at least partially bonded hard to the tire. One nearly-new Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02, now scrap. Oh, and a multi-day wait to get a new one. Yep, that’s a fun situation.
So, how the hell did this happen? Well, I have a few theories. See, I live in a relatively cold climate, so it’s common to see 80/100 bitumen used for roadworks, a fairly soft grade of bitumen that has good flexibility at lower temperatures in exchange for lower heat tolerance than harder grades of bitumen commonly used in hot climates.
See, as ExxonMobil spec sheets explain, 80/100 bitumen is so named because during ASTM D 5 testing at 25 degrees Celsius, a specially weighted needle penetrates this grade of bitumen by between 80 and 100-tenths of a millimeter. To achieve the 80/100 grade of softness, 80/100 bitumen must have a softening point somewhere between 42ºC and 50ºC. For those used to dealing in Freedom Units, that’s a range of between 107.6ºF and 122ºF. Somewhere in that temperature range, the bitumen goes soft and sticky again, and in an age of climate change, that can be a bit of a problem.
Now, ambient temperatures weren’t up in that range yesterday, but tarmac is a heatsink, and asphalt temperatures on sunny days often substantially exceed the temperature of the air. Could the bitumen in the parking lot have reached its softening point sitting out in the sun? Absolutely, but that’s likely not the only reason my tire and the parking lot became one.
Part of the reason the bitumen softened and bonded to the tire could be an application issue. Bitumen sealer is usually meant to be laid on pretty thin and given plenty of time to cure, but that evidently didn’t happen here. Someone laid it on extra heavy and it might not have set properly, and this is the result.
Thankfully, my Boxster is equipped with a spare tire, so I was able to bung on the space-saver and make it home. Needless to say, the handling was somewhat affected by a 25-year-old, 115-section temporary spare on the front left corner, not to mention the hit to the Boxster’s aesthetics. Also, I really don’t want to be driving on an original spare tire for more than, say, 20 miles or so. Needless to say, I’m still rather annoyed because I had plans with this car this weekend, and now those aren’t happening.
So, what have we learned here? Well, just because a parking lot patch looks fairly solid and hasn’t caused any transfer issues in the past doesn’t mean it’s safe to park on. Also, buy a spare set of wheels and tires just in case something comes along and fucks your shit up, or at least a decent full-sized spare. Hey, at least the bitumen isn’t bonded to anything else on the car.
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
Adhesive-Mounted Rear View Mirrors Are An Automotive Engineering Shame That We’re Finally Leaving Behind
-
It’s Possible These Tires Weren’t Great: Cold Start
-
The Automotive World’s Biggest Example Of Magical Thinking Are These Tires
-
A Tire Doesn’t Work The Way You Think It Works
-
The Incredibly Strange Pirelli BS3 Tire Featured Removable Tread You Could Change Yourself
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.
You are very fortunate that your 25-year-old spare a) held air and b) didn’t self-destruct on the drive home or wherever.
Where did you stow the sticky tire once swapped out? Is the frunk on those big enough for that?
Pardon my American metric system ignorance, but isn’t that a roundabout way of saying between and 8 and 10 millimeters?
That’s some proper abuse of the metric system
Where do you store a spare tire in a Boxter? I certainly don’t have room for on in my Cayman.
“One nearly-new Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02, now scrap.”
I hate to think what you do with your shoes when you step on gum or dog poo…
Just clean it, Dude.
Still better than our local Outback parking lot: saw yesterday: a sinkhole opened up in the front row. For the second time in a decade
Been there. Heat gun and a painters tool will get most of the mass out of the treads and off the tire in about 5 minutes so you won’t have balance issues. And those tires barely have treads and no siping so it should be easy. The residual just wears off after some spirited driving, which is what a sports car is for. Or, if this thing is pampered then you can use some kerosene. Or, if you actually drive it then just put it on the back and do a burnout.
Never seen this happen here. Then again, the high temps we have down here in Atlanta mean we use a different blend of asphalt/bitumen. With ambient air temps above 90 much of the summer, I have used a laser thermometer to temp things, and the pavement here can be at 160-180 degrees on a hot summer day.
I think this is more the result of some shitty patching job in a private parking lot. I’ve seen it before.
Toronto is not Yellowknife, it’s more like Milwaukee. No one should be using Arctic-grade materials here. But hey, parking lot = private property = brother-in-law maintenance.
Gotta say, and it’s only a picture, but I might be thinking often about a set of Minilites or Watanabes painted in the color of your spare.
Red steelies are waaaay better than black alloys.
“that can be a bit of a problem.”
Yup, it can be a bitumen problem…
Call the Bitumen to fix the bitumen.
Put that tire on the back and do a burnout… That’ll get the bitumen up over the softening temperature quickly, and centripetal force will remove it from the tire
And then THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK into the inside of the fender.
Hey, free undercoating.
Thats what I would of done
There’s some guys in Thailand who will shave that tire down for you in just a few minutes. It will look brand new. Call it “for track use only.”
At the track the problem is the melty tires pulling up pieces of the pavement.
It happened to me all the time in NYC. It’s even a thing to drop interesting items into heat-softened pavement. A friend used to make cute skulls and crossbones in the pavement with plastic cutlery. Of course, some streets on the LES are seemingly paved with bottle tops.
Anyway, it wears right off. I never thought it was a problem.
Oddly enough here in Tracy California with 110-degree days and hotter-n-hell pavement, I never see that.
Because they’re designed that way. Except in the mountains, it never gets near freezing, so they don’t have to spec material for those temps. They only have to worry about it holding up in hot conditions
Had not thought about that.
We used to get 40 gallon barrels of emulsified asphalt on the farm to mix with pea gravel for driveways.
That stuff would melt on 100 degree days, but that was a once a year event back then.
I am very certain that that tire is not “now scrap”, that you can complete whatever weekend plans you had, and that you probably didn’t even need to put the spare on.
But the story is better if they had to put a spare on. Also maybe a track day/canyon drive and not just need to go somewhere.
Yeah, once you clean it off that tire should be fine for even a track day or canyon drive.
No, the tire is not scrap. But you definitely need to clean it off before you drive on it.
Last time it happened to me, it was impossible to go over 40 mph because the steering wheel was shaking too hard to hold on to. It was so bad, I thought I had a severely bent tie rod or damaged steering knuckle.
It took about an hour with a flat tipped screwdriver to clean most of it off. Then I drove over a patch of sand so it would cling to what’s left, and it took about another hour to clean all that off.
It won’t come off quickly during ordinary driving. And doing that will likely ruin the car’s alignment.
Dateline 1,000,000 years AD:
Anthropologists excavating the Toronto Tarpits have unearthed the perfectly preserved remains of a primitive, apparently human formed artifact dating from BBB (Before the Big Burn). They believe the artifact may have been a crude conveyance or weapon of some sort.
“It’s too soon to know what its purpose was for certain,” said lead investigator D4@##eee. “On the one hand it seems too small to have served any practical transportation purpose, so I remain skeptical of that assessment, though there does appear to be devices intended to fit the theoretical human form factor. On the other hand, its bright yellow color is one that in nature often denotes danger. I’m leaning in that direction.
“Regardless, this is an unprecedented find that seems to confirm not only the fact of so-called human existence in our deep past, but that they were also sophisticated tool users. Paleolinguists are analyzing some symbols inscribed on the surface and I’m confident these will prove a match for similar symbology found in a few other locations around the planet. See?,” he said holding up a placard.
BOXSTER
“I’d bet my right tentacles we’re on the correct track.”
wow, those continentals really stick to the road!
I think if you soak it with a solvent to soften it, it will probably come right off. Gasoline would probably work. Also whoever owns that parking lot is responsible for the damage if you can’t get it off.
Agreed. Some quick Redditing seems to support trying diesel or kerosene as a solvent and using a plastic putty knife. Makes sense.
Yes, do this. Soak it in warm diesel for a day, then go at it with a putty knife and screwdriver. You may have to repeat.
A heat gun will also make quick work of softening pretty much any bitumen. Obviously you always want to be careful with a heat gun.
Kerosene. Road paving crew use it to clean asphalt off of their tools.
And, uh, to ensure… “continued business”
Gasoline did the trick when I stepped on a tar ball in Huntington Beach, CA. Pretty much the same as bitumen.
“One nearly-new Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02, now scrap”
So much for “ExtremeContact”. I say you file a warranty claim.
This used to happen to my S4 in the parking lot at work. Just scrape it off and the road will take care of the rest, it never caused a problem. I can’t imagine tossing a tire because of it, that seems like significant overkill.
Some of us actually like our paint, you know…
So cover the area with painters tape for a couple of days.
If it were a shitbox, sure
Hmmm. If only there was some sort of paint protection product that you could put on your car. Maybe something like a thick, clear film. Oh, well, never heard of such a thing. Certainly never heard about it here on this website. To bad. Maybe they could be a sponsor. If they existed.
So what if it isn’t a shitbox? It’s not permanent after all.
Because you can’t put painters tape on a nice car? I don’t get it. If you’re worried about it damaging the paint or something, don’t. It is specifically designed to not damage the paint.
That’s a fair concern. It never caused a problem for my paint, but I also don’t have a speed yellow car.
Could you just rip a phat burnout to get rid of it and re-true your tire?
Heat gun or maybe even a hair dryer and something to scrape with.
A million years ago, I worked at a Wal-Mart in Odessa, TX. It got really hot that summer, and I was dragging a pallet jack loaded with a double stacked pallet of 50lb bags of dog food. I had to move it from the outside storage room across the asphalt parking lot, and into the pet department.
I ran out of momentum right before I got to the door, and the steel wheels sank into the superheated asphalt. It was already jacked up as high as it would go, so it was sitting with the forks flat on the ground with about a ton of Ol’ Roy kibble bearing down on it.
It took me and 5 other guys to get it out of the ruts it carved.
Lesson learned. Never stop moving.
Speed and power!
You just have to Clarkson it.
Well, you’re a better man than me, I guess. I’d have scraped as much off as can be removed and drove on it until it wasn’t noticeable. I feel like I’ve probably driven on worse and it worked out fine.
I see your point but the rocker panel and fender of the car would be splattered with bitumen!
Did think about that after typing my comment. I was a lot less fastidious in my youth driving beaters before I started buying new cars to drive.
Yeah, that’s the thing. If it happened on the 3 Series, I’d have blue-taped the fender and run it, but the Boxster’s entered in a show in about two weeks and my paint correction guy is having a busy summer.
I have done this and it was just fine. Still have the tire and the bitumen fell/wore off eventually. I did spend about an hour scraping, though.