Tire repair safety question

Factual Questions
1

Today (while rotating my tires) I found a long, narrow roofing tack poking out of one of the tires on my wife’s SUV. I pulled it out to see if it had penetrated through, and air started hissing out. I then changed the tire with the full-service spare.

Bad news now: the hole is on the sidewall, :eek: but is very tiny and only about half an inch from the edge. In other words, it was sticking into the thick part of the side tread, not into the smooth part of the sidewall.

OK…
Guy at the self-serve garage I was rotating the tires at says the hole is patchable, but he only does plugs.

Guy at the independent tire shop says he won’t touch anything on the sidewall. He’s worried about the liability.

I now head to BJ’s so they can look at it, or buy a new tire if necessary. The tire guy there is pretty sure he can patch the hole. He puts a patch only, with no plug, because he doesn’t want to enlarge the hole.

Big question now: do I let my wife drive on this?

The BJ’s guy is pretty confident in his patch. He says the worst case is a slow leak, because of the small size of the hole. He thinks a blowout is unlikely.

BTW, there was another nail on the flat part of the tread! He plug-and-patched that, too. (Yes, there’s a lot of construction going on around us.)

The tires are 11 months old (BFGoodrich), and have about 12,000 miles on them. The full-service spare is a different brand of tire (Bridgestone) and has never been driven on before.

[sub]Sorry this was so long…[/sub]

2

While I was working as a tire tech. (they make it sound important, lol) we would only seal sidewall punctures with a patch, never a plug. This was only if the hole was at the point on the tire where it was very close to the tread. If it was very high up on the sidewall we would never patch it, but if its a very small hole I think it would be ok. I could be wrong though.

3

Don’t apoligize for a long thread when you put in good information. Michelin tought me how to patch a tire. Not spell. A tire has a limited area in whitch you can not repair. It is along the sidewall, from the bead where the tire and rim meet, to about one inch from the sholder. Any damage in this area is unrepairable. A competant tire shop, Not BJ’s, could make this tire safe for the rest of its service life.

A patch is the best way to seal a hole. Using a plug alone is not the best repair. Using both is important to do when the steel belts in the face of the tire have the damage. The patch keeps the air in, the plug keeps the water out.

Let me know how things work out.

4

Thanks for the input!

I have not yet put the repaired tire back on the car. My wife is currently driving on the full-service spare.

As a followup question, is this a big deal? You always hear that you shouldn’t mix brands of tires.

(As I mentioned above, not only are these different brands with different tread patterns, but 3 of the tires have 12,000 miles on them, while the spare hasn’t been driven on at all before this weekend.)

In any event, the repaired tire seems to be holding air. I guess I’m going to put it back into service. This is your last chance to stop me!

5

i’d listen to booker! the big “M” don’t mess around. put that tire on and drive! i would say (but i’m not an expert) that “H” rated tires with patchs are plenty safe. patch a “Z” rated tire and it becomes an “H”. most likely the speeds and load your wife will experiance will not cause a problem.

all my damn tires have plugs and patches o’plenty, as i live in BFE and have lots of road hazards.

(the flipside is the price of the tire is the cost for piece of mind!)