Swapping Tires

Last night I put Rachelle's snow tires on her car. She has all-season tires, but they just don't do well in snow. Her normal tires are also at the end of their lives; they were original to the car, have 72K miles on them and are finally getting down to the wear-bars.

Before driving to Jersey for Thanksgiving I noticed one of her tires was down to 20 psi when all the others were around 31. I filled it back up and it held the pressure, so I assumed some kid probably let the air out of it in a parking lot somewhere. Last night while changing the tires I found out why it lost air, and boy am I glad I had leather gloves on:

This was on the inside of the rear driver's side tire. I guess it had worked itself into a position where it wasn't leaking air after the first 10 lbs because the tire was still up around 30psi and we had just driven over 600 miles on it. Who knows how long that thing has been there.

I only found it when it snagged my glove, if I had done the job in bare hands it would've done some major damage.