Car Tire Repair

Car tire punctures. One of the typical cases is running over a screw or nail or piece of something thin and sharp with one or even two wheels at once. You may simply not notice a foreign object stuck in the tire that may later fly out and at the end of the day you will find your tire flat. It is rather difficult to detect a foreign object in the wheel if you don’t pay any attention to it or do this rarely. The frequent pressure drops would be a first sign. In case the puncture was however detected, it would be necessary to eliminate the leak. To do that, an adhesive patch over the punctured area can be used. Another solution is cold chemical rubber vulcanization. If you are not familiar with these technologies, you should rather contact the specialists.

Tools and materials for repair

A special tire repair plug can be used for fixing a puncture in a tubeless tire. It shall be positioned as follows: first prepare the area being treated by pumping up the tire a little and smoothing the edges inside the puncture hole with a special tool, to avoid any damage of the plug. Apply some glue on the instrument (which can be a bradawl with eye, but in most cases a special tool is used). After that insert instrument into the hole and twiddle it a few times clockwise. Then remove a protective film from the tire plug and fasten the plug into an eye of the bradawl or the other special tool being used. It’s better to coat the tire plug with glue beforehand, in order to reduce attrition and simplify positioning. Then push the plug into the tire and pull the tool out. The plug will remain in the tire; you just need to trim off the excess pieces. Actually, this is not a complex process. You only have to do it clearly the right way. Finally, don’t forget to pump the tire up and check the repaired area for air leak.

Car tire cuts. This is a very serious type of damage which in some cases actually means a tire replacement. Dealing with tire cuts on your own does not really work out. Even a well done self-made repair usually can not ensure or guarantee neither the proper reliability nor the qualitative wheel balancing, which is critical for tire performance, especially on our roads and at high speed. Thus in case of serious cuts the best would be contacting specialists who can recommend whether it is reasonable at all to restore the tire or replace it instead. If it is still possible to fix the tire, a special cord patch can be used, to be sealed by hot vulcanization. If the cut is not so big, a special so-called «mushroom» patch would be helpful to restore the air-tightness and strength of the tire. Besides these methods, there are other approaches for tire cut repair. All these techniques, in most cases, are known to experienced specialists dealing with tire repair on a daily basis. Some cuts can be easily fixed with a tire plug using the method described above. Tire rupture is a problem that has to do with a cord damage that may occur due to deep cuts, blow-outs and heavy impacts. If a rupture or any serious cut was detected, the tire strength can be recovered with a cord patch. Once you discovered a rupture on the tire, it is better that you go to the nearest tire shop right away. Otherwise this defect will be constantly becoming bigger. The reason for that is that after receiving the initial damage, other threads start spreading and tearing under growing tension, until the tire becomes unusable and blows out. It is also worth to mention that if a problem like that is not detected in time, the tire may lose the in-between connection of threads of its entire carcass and no repair would help once that happened.

There are a few other types of tire damage. We have looked into the main ones that occur more often. Different kinds of materials and tools can be used to fix them. It all depends on the knowledge you have or the specialist dealing with repair has. In the majority of cases, tire damage can be fixed with patches or plugs. Since there are various types of them, the manufacturers of such materials usually indicate in what particular case the one or the other material is better to use.

Anyway, if you noticed any external damage on your tire, don’t hurry up to buy a new set. There is always an option of repairing it and then your tires will continue to perform well for a certain period of time. Tire repair, nowadays, is a popular type of service that allows to get rid of damage and defects with the use of contemporary equipment.