Onboard Compressor & Collapsible Spare Lessons Learned
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2019 3:21 pm
The middle son, who drives the Lapis Blue '06 Cayenne S, was supposed to come home from college today. He calls to tell me that someone slashed his right front tire while it was parked in his fraternity parking lot. The car next to him had its window shattered. Not sure which is worse, but damn, that sucks.
He's replaced brakes on the car, so he knows how to change over to the spare. Problem is that it's got one of those collapsible spare tires. I've never used one, so I was the blind leading the blind over the phone. And I didn't want him driving 120 miles home on it. Bottom line, I told him to pull the wheel off the car and get a buddy to drive him to a tire shop to have a new tire mounted on the wheel. Then, take the wheel back to the car and just skip the spare tire altogether. That's what he did.
But, I thinks to myself "Self, what if you get stuck out where you must use the collapsible spare - shouldn't you know how to use it?" I went looking for instructions, and found very little on the forums. I did find out that not all 955 generation Cayennes even have a spare. You have 3 options for filling the spare tire space in a Cayenne, but you only get to choose 2 of the 3: collapsible spare tire, spare battery, subwoofer. So, you can have a subwoofer packed over a spare battery, or a spare tire over a spare battery or a spare tire and a subwoofer. If you bypass the collapsible spare, they give you a can of fix-a-flat.
As for the collapsible spare tire, you must air it up before putting it on the vehicle. Here's a video of what it looks like to air one up:
I watched a couple of other videos of inflating collapsible spares, and word to the wise, watch where your fingers are when that spare spreads out to the rim of the wheel. The way some of them pop out, it would probably leave a mark.
Several people asked if Porsche provides a compressor in the cargo area. As you can see from the above video, it looks like there's a built-in compressor somewhere on the car. A little more digging revealed that there is a bag in the spare tire well with a air line that you plug in below the front passenger seat. Apparently you can use the onboard compressor to air up all kinds of things in addition to the spare tire. I assume all Cayennes have the onboard compressor, even those without a collapsible spare. For your convenience, I found a Youtube video on how to use the onboard compressor and how/where to plug it in below the passenger seat. Here's a link:
He's replaced brakes on the car, so he knows how to change over to the spare. Problem is that it's got one of those collapsible spare tires. I've never used one, so I was the blind leading the blind over the phone. And I didn't want him driving 120 miles home on it. Bottom line, I told him to pull the wheel off the car and get a buddy to drive him to a tire shop to have a new tire mounted on the wheel. Then, take the wheel back to the car and just skip the spare tire altogether. That's what he did.
But, I thinks to myself "Self, what if you get stuck out where you must use the collapsible spare - shouldn't you know how to use it?" I went looking for instructions, and found very little on the forums. I did find out that not all 955 generation Cayennes even have a spare. You have 3 options for filling the spare tire space in a Cayenne, but you only get to choose 2 of the 3: collapsible spare tire, spare battery, subwoofer. So, you can have a subwoofer packed over a spare battery, or a spare tire over a spare battery or a spare tire and a subwoofer. If you bypass the collapsible spare, they give you a can of fix-a-flat.
As for the collapsible spare tire, you must air it up before putting it on the vehicle. Here's a video of what it looks like to air one up:
I watched a couple of other videos of inflating collapsible spares, and word to the wise, watch where your fingers are when that spare spreads out to the rim of the wheel. The way some of them pop out, it would probably leave a mark.
Several people asked if Porsche provides a compressor in the cargo area. As you can see from the above video, it looks like there's a built-in compressor somewhere on the car. A little more digging revealed that there is a bag in the spare tire well with a air line that you plug in below the front passenger seat. Apparently you can use the onboard compressor to air up all kinds of things in addition to the spare tire. I assume all Cayennes have the onboard compressor, even those without a collapsible spare. For your convenience, I found a Youtube video on how to use the onboard compressor and how/where to plug it in below the passenger seat. Here's a link: