Recommendation
Learn how to change your tires in your driveway.

Details
We where driving up to Sacramento yesterday and car comes up on drivers side pointing to our vehicle indicatiing that we have problem. Pulled over and found that we have flat left rear tire. Need to point out that is was raining during this time.

Got out the owners manual to find the jack, tire and procedure to change tire. To change the rear tires, you do not jack up the body. You insert the jack in front of the tire and engage the bump on the control arm. This is different that most vehicles that I have had to change. The procedure to raise the jack is not easily performed, you have two metal rods joined together in "T" pattern as you are raising the jack.

After had the tire raised off the ground, found that the tire did not want to come off (all the lug nuts where laying on the ground). Fiqured what the heck (hoping that vehicle would not come off jack), so pulled hard on the upper portion of the tire and it came loose. Installed replacement tire and headed off to find repair shop for tire.

Went to 3 Ford stores in SAC, the first did not seem to care if I was there, the second was having party and could not start service on the vehicle for 2 hours and the third took immediate action to remedy the problem.

They found that the tire had been punctured in center of tread, no object found in thread. Indicated that proper repair procedure is to patch the tire without using plug.

Interesting detail is that service writer noted difference in tire and they did not stock this tire in inventory.