Yesterday on my way home from the Hill Country Rendezvous I hear a strange noise right after I turn onto Bee Caves Road from SH 71. I slow down and the noise goes away. I'm less than 5 miles from home so I keep going. When I turn left onto my road the car feels a little spongy like maybe the right rear tire is low. Sitting in the driveway the tire looks a little low so I get my gauge and it has Zero psi. The tire pressure monitor never came on! I look underneath and even with the pavement I see a roofing staple sticking out.

Now I know the run-flats are supposedly non-repairable but I figure what the heck, maybe I can plug it and it will hold air well enough for me to drive it until I can get a new tire from Tire Rack.

So removed the tire and rolled it so the staple would be at the top to have a look. WOW!

So what do you all think, should I patch it or plug it?





I'm pretty sure "fix-a-flat" won't help.

 

Although run flats can be repaired, you may not be able to repair this puncture. Most shops will not repair a puncture in the shoulder area of the tire. The notion of where the shoulder is depends on certain belt structures in the tire (maybe a real expert will explain what is really going on). Based on my prior bad luck, the shoulder runs in about ¾” to 1” from the edge It looks like you got nailed (sorry about the pun) right in the edge.

 

They say that, as long as the puncture is in the tread, the tire is usually repairable. However, yours show a nailpoint exit in the sidewall, and that usually means your runflat tire is history.

 

I plugged one of my Dunlop runflats and drove it for over 2500 miles afterwards, but my puncture was more in the center of the tire, and there weren't any odd noises or vibrations - just a flat tire light on the speedo. So they can be plugged and driven on, but your tire looks like it might not be pluggable with that sidewall staple puncture.

You'll have a very hard time finding a tire shop who will patch (or even plug) a sidewall puncure on a regular tire, let alone a runflat (it seems most tire shop technicians hate runflats anyways). I say call up the tire rack and get some new shoes on order. Looks like yours are coming due for replacement anyways. Good luck!

 

Well between the nail close to the sidewall and the staple that is in the sidewall, you are looking at a new tire. Definitely not repairable.

The main reason a tire store will not repair a runflat is because there is no way to determine how far the tire has been driven on flat. The store won't take the chance that the tire has been damaged internally and won't cause a blow-out. They don't want the potential liability.

 

Before you have a run flat patched and remounted, carefully inspect the seals on the sidewalls after they are removed. The machine used to remove the run flats can potentially damage this area of the tire due to the stiffness of the sidewall. If a tire shop doesn't notice it and remounts it, I'm thinking it could be a very bad experience for someone at some point. Good luck on the tire above, I'm not sure you'll find a place that will do that.

 

yeah, its not the fact that its a runflat that makes that unrepairable its that:

A. you can't repair two punctures that close to one another

B. you can't repait puntures in the sidewall

 

yep, sidewall repairs are not safe and the other one is too close to the
sidewall.