Clickbaitey title? Maybe, but it's the genuine question. Dunno if this is the best subforum for this, but it certainly doesn't qualify as a technical issue.

Since buying my 2010 Civic EX sedan in February, I have had no less than SIX tire punctures(in the 6-7 YEARS with my previous car, I had two - I have had the absolute WORST luck with this car in this regard). All the result of screws and nails. It's more than slightly annoying to have to deal with this so often - I have road hazard coverage so it's been of minimal impact on my wallet, but it's still annoying to have to take a chunk of time out of random days to get it dealt with. So I've come up with a solution...

I have ordered a set of powerful neodymium magnets to place in front of the front tires(and behind the rears to catch things while reversing, which is when this puncture occurred) to hopefully pick up screws and nails before they reach the tires. I know this won't be 100% effective, but in my entire life I've only ever once had a puncture that wasn't the result of something a magnet can grab, so if the magnets are strong enough it SHOULD work(at least while driving at the in-city speeds that ALL of these punctures have occurred at) on the vast majority of the crap that's been making my life such an annoyance.

So the question is where best to place these to allow them to do their job without causing me any other trouble(say, for example, preventing them from trying to rip tools out of my hands when I need to service the brakes)? Anyone have any suggestions? The ones I ordered come with stick-on pads, so I don't necessarily need to find a spot they'll magnetize to, but since I've no idea what the quality of the adhesive will be I don't know if I can rely on it.

The magnets should be here either tomorrow or Tuesday, and I'll test to make sure they can grab from a sufficient distance to do the job before I actually attach them - I'm not just gonna throw them on and hope for the best.

 

I'm curious to see how this works out for you... no advice though. I just run meatier tires and that seems to alleviate this type of issue.

 

Sadly the magnets I ordered are too weak. Looks like I'll need something a little more dangerously powerful(and therefore pricey) to make this work.

 

Rather than worry about where to place magnets, you should concentrate on where to drive on the road. You'll find that the majority of "junk" on the road will be at the right side near the curb. That's where it collects and is also deposited when the garbage guys do the pick up and happen to drop stuff. Try to stay away from that area in the road and you'll probably have much better luck.
Duane

 

This is, unfortunately, not an option. As I work in newspaper delivery, it is not possible to keep my car away from the side of the road - my city routes require me to stop on the road and exit the vehicle, and I can't afford the repeated citations I would get if I didn't pull to the side while doing so, and on the rural route I have pull up to the tubes to deliver the papers.

That being said, given the timing of when I pick up the punctures(either hearing the clacking of the offending nail/screw or when the pressure warning comes up) I can also say with certainty that at least half of these punctures were not picked up while the tire was in the vicinity of the side of the road. Two were picked up while I was on the fifteen-minute drive in between paper pickup and delivery area -both on the left side- and a third featured a very audible POP from the right as I was pulling away from a tube, so whatever caused them was in the middle of the road/lane.

As much as I wish your advice could work for me, circumstances prevent such, and it wouldn't have saved me from two even if circumstances were different.