Apologies if this is a repeat but I couldn’t see a thread on it. Yesterday I had a tyre changed on our caravan and got talking to the chap about our standard tyre repair kit on the MX5. He didn’t comment specifically about our kit but said that in the majority of cases he’s seen the spray system does not work and writes the tyre off to boot. He then mentioned another type of kit you can get…here is an example (just one I found as he didn’t recommend a specific one):
At first glance it appears to make sense if you have an obvious puncture such as a nail or screw you can remove and replace with a strip of sealant but I’m always sceptical of these things. For a tenner I was thinking of chucking it in the boot to go with the other kit. I appreciate it’s only a temporary repair and I’m not keen on filling the boot with a space saver.
Does anyone have experience of this type of kit, good or bad?
I can only say that this type of repair has worked for me.
There is a lot of debate on various forums with vehement argument against these repairs and the danger they could present.
From my point of view the repairs I have done are small holes created by screws so no real structural integrity compromised.
I had to enlarge the holes to fit the strips but clearly they have worked well with no issue at all.
When I researched as you are I was looking to find any evidence of clear failure with this repair but found none.
With any potential safety issue in mind I have the repaired tyres on the rear axle.
Little doubt this thread will have a number of people advising that repair should only be used to get you home or to a garage where the tyre should be replaced with new and another new tyre on the other side of the axle to balance that. You must make up your own mind:-)
One trick I found to make this repair even easier was doing it with the wheel on the car. Â
A s/h spare wheel with tyre is the same price as a new bottle of IMS gunge when it expires. There isn’t that much reduction in boot space as you can put stuff inside the wheel.
That is a neat case with nice tools, better than the ones I carry in our cars.
These kits are perfect for the odd nail or screw in a tread block, but very marginal in a groove in the tread, and useless for side-walls etc.
I’ve used this type of repair three times over the years after seeing how my local tyre experts repaired a couple of punctures on our cars and seeking their advice. I also carry spare tubes of the vulcanising glue - once opened they go off so no good in a few weeks time.
However, once I’ve done the repair and got home again I always, always take the wheel to a proper tyre place to have it checked by the experts. Just once it needed a new tyre because it had gone too far when soft and although it looked just fine on the outside the inside was totally shot to crumbs. The other times I was lucky to catch the puncture while the tyre still had just about enough air, but was not holding pressure.
About twenty years ago, when I was living in Hong Kong I suffered a puncture on my motorbike (tubeless tyres) caused by a nail in the tread. I managed to get the bike to a tyre garage. They took one look at the hole then plugged it using on of these kits and neatly trimmed off the excess strip to level with the tread so it was almost invisible. I thought no more about the repair until about five years later, after I had returned to UK and had decided to replace the tyres. By then it had gone through the import vehicle check and a couple of UK MOT tests and had passed with no advisories.
I was at the tyre shop when the old one was removed - I then remembered about the “plug” repair. The plug repair was quite obvious from the inside but the tyre had never lost any air at all!
I’ve also used a plug to repair a hole caused by a self tapping screw found in the tubeless rear tyre of my ancient off-road trials bike. It worked perfectly and never went flat years afterwards.
These days, knowing more about the subject I would only use this type of kit as a temporary repair on a road vehicle, but at least I know it could help get me out of a fix. I carry one on my bike (with CO2 cartridges to reinflate the tyre) and one in my BMW, which doesn’t carry a spare wheel, alongside the tyre latex “gloop” re-inflation kit with electric pump.
There are loads of threads about this stuff if you just put “Puncture” into the search option.Â
I have to say the person that told the OP that the tyre is ruined because sealant was put in is at the lower end of the intelligence scale of tyre monkeys. Sealant in the vast majority of cases hides the problem that you are wanting them to find. If you pull a nail out of a tyre it is hard enough to find where it penetrated on the inside with no gunk, it is way, way beyond economical to attempt to try and find it once it has been sealed with goo.Â
While plugs have a role, you should understand that they are not a legitimate lifetime repair and so any “professional” fitter sending you on your way on the basis that it is good for the remaining life of the tyre is breaking the law. In addition, while it may well be considered a sensible “get you home” fix, were you to be involved in or the cause of a incident with fatalities, and investigators were to adjudge the cause to be tyre related you would need to hope your Barrister is better than theirs.
One of the main factors, not the only one, but still significant, is that there is no internal examination of the tyre for internal damage which can be significant on a tyre that has deflated.Â
A separate point that was mentioned, never, ever, ever repair a sidewall. That is just a ticking bomb.Â