Went on an errand this morning, and as I'm pulling into the car park, the TPMS indicates low pressure in my driver side rear tire.

After completing my errand, I drove the car across the street to the petrol station and filled the tire with air. By that time, the tire was visibly flat.

Having topped up the air, I drove about a mile, and the TPMS again indicated low pressure in the same tire.

Drove about 5 miles to the tire shop where I purchased these new Conti ExtremeContact DWS a couple of weeks ago.

They found a piece of wood stuck in the tire. Well, that explains the rapid air leak. Again the tire was visibly flat by the time I got to the tire shop (Discount Tire).

They deemed the tire repairable and fixed it.

Question: How does having a "repaired" tire affect the tire's safety/performance during high speeds and heavy turns, if at all? Specifically, is it still safe to drive on this tire at sustained speeds of 80-90 mph, and peak speeds of up to 120 mph? And, can I expect the tire to hold up through high speed cornering?

Cheers.

 

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...jsp?techid=77&

A punctured speed rated tire brings with it additional considerations. While some tire manufacturers "allow" a tire to retain its speed rating if a specified multi-step repair procedure is followed exactly, most tire manufacturers reason that since they have no control over the damage caused by the puncture or the quality of the repair, they cannot confirm that the tire has retained its high speed capability. Therefore, their policy is that a punctured and repaired tire no longer retains its speed rating and should be treated as a non-speed rated tire.

 

Not knowing how flat the tire was it sounds like you added a little extra stress to the sidewalls driving on a "visibly flat tire" but it could be ok.

I had 2 plugs in a stock runflat on my '09 R56. These were not the tire shop plugs there they patch/plug from the inside, I have a tire plug kit (Matco I think) to get me by. I have had this kit for years and used about a dozen plugs in the last 10 years or so.

I know it wasn't the greatest idea, but even with those 2 plugs in the tires I had no issues running them for another 10k+ miles and reaching speeds of 140mph.

 

My wife is the head of compounding for a major tire manufacter. Couple of concerns that she would have; Running a flat tire can rub on the inner liner(it's the intergral tube like feature of the tire and holds the air in) and cause it to fail prematurely, no way to repair. To properly repair the puncture, an internal patch must be vulcanized on and be plugged through the hole too. The patch takes care of the holding air, the plug prevents water from going into the steel belts, steel, water and air makes rust and could yield belt seperation, that's really bad!

Many people have run plugged tires with little problems. Just sharing some insight from an expert.

 

I have had numerous tires in passenger cars and trucks properly repaired (not a plug) and had no safey concerns or issues driving them at nomal speeds.... however... IMHO... I would never drive a repaired tire at 120 MPH in a performance driving situation such as a track day if that is what you are implying. Tires are cheap compared to the loss of a car or physical injury resulting from a catastrophic failure... even if the odds are low.