Is a tire repair at a shop worth it? I have the tools but someone told me the shops do a better job

Is a tire repair at a shop worth it? I have the tools but someone told me the shops do a better job.

The tire shop repair is worth it but any puncture ruins the integrity of the tire. It's only good for A to B driving now. Also they will only do one or two repairs before passing on it due to liability reasons.

Shoot. It's not even that big kg a screw.

My parents are old and screws always end up in their tires. So I have to go to their house and haul the damaged tires to the local Goodyear.

Goodyear fixes them for free in a couple hours.

Never have a problem with a patched tire going bad.

they generally have better access to tools and materials the average home person doesn't.

Like....trying to patch a tire with that $5 stick kit bullshit is going to be nowhere near as effective as dunking the tire in a tank and finding ALL the holes in it, breaking the tire down on a tire machine, scuffing the inner tire surface, and using a high quality patch/plug with plenty of glue. A patch like that is basically never going to go bad if properly done. Your faggot stick patch is pretty much guaranteed to not work, or start leaking again.

It's also usually only like $20 for a tire shop to patch one...so it's not like there's a huge difference in money here.

If you buy the protection plan, or road hazard insurance or whatever from a lot of tire places, then yeah tire patching is free.

Former tire fag here. You're better off just taking it to the shop. If you don't trust them with your car (which if it's strictly a tire shop I 100% don't blame you) you can just take off the wheel and bring it to them.

9/10 times a patch is used, and when done correctly it will last the life of the tire. The tenth time is when the hole is so big you're forced to use a plug, which is actually a good thing because they are more reliable than a patch.

>Why don't you use a plug all of the time when repairing tires?

Because most of the time it's just a nail or a screw, I'm not going to spend 15 minutes making the hole 5x bigger than it was while fighting with the steel cords. I can do a patch in 2 minutes, helps me clear the board faster and gets you to your car sooner.

Fuck it I'm going cheap. This is a stupid question, but I can't take it to the shop after this, correct ?

you must have worked at a real shitty place.

Patch/plugs (both a patch and a plug) are pretty much standard anymore, and it only takes maybe 15 SECONDS to drill a hole out if you're using the proper tool.

I dunno, can't tell just by your shitty pic. Hey maybe try centering the pic on what you're pointing at, gayboy.

If the sidewall is worn down to the point that feels like you can basically poke your finger through it, then it's fucked. The steel belts are totally trashed, there's no fixing that, it's actually dangerous to drive on as well.

it only cost me 15$ to get it done at a shop

How about this.

still no idea what you're driving at. The stick plug is probably far enough into the tread where it can still be patched with a patch/plug. It's not very hard to rip the stick plug out...

This

Working as a TIA certified tire tech, we're trained to _always_ drill out the hole and use a plug. If you don't plug the hole, water could get in the steel plies and rust the tire inside out. And yeah, drilling the hole takes literally 15 seconds.

I've had to decline more than a few botched DIY repair jobs. Once you fuck it up, the tire is trash. Pretty much goes around here that if it was diy repaired and it's still leaking from the repair, we don't even touch it.

I'm getting nervous about the patch.like if it fucks up. Can I still take it to the shop

I dunno, is it holding air? You can spray it with soapy water just to see.

If you're that worried, sure you can still take it to a shop.

My store was corporate, they didn't supply us with drills. We had a reamer, that was it. And there's no fucking way I'm buying a drill for a job I get paid pennies to do. I do agree though, drilling it out and putting a plug instead of a patch is a better option. I've never had a patch come back, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

The shop can probably do a better job, but who cares? It'll take you five minutes to do it yourself. I've never had any issues with these patches.

Yeah I dont think I believe the whole rusting the steel cords thing. I can see it happening, but it actually being a widespread problem there's just no way. I think it's just one of those things where the store doesn't want to be liable for it if it comes back.

For example my store required us to grind the hub's and the back of the wheel or it "could cause a wheel off incident" dude fuck off. Worst case scenario a really rusty hub will make a brake rotor have run out, in which case you should clean it. 98% of cars arent that bad.

Friend had a flat. Technician found a screw "head" first in the tire. Not the pointy part.

I had flat. Tech told me a screw was "screwed" into my tire. Hmm who the fuck has a problem with me...? Still dunno.

I say try it yourself man. Live learn.

I'd just use a die grinder with a carbide bit the size of the plug to drill tires, took a few seconds to drill right through them.

I'm guessing btw, you worked at wal-mart. That's generally the dumbest and most half assed auto shop in the world.

The whole reason why you clean the mating surfaces is specifically because of those worst case scenarios. I've had cars come back with unclean hubs and the lugs were loose enough to unscrew by hand. It's definitely a liability thing for sure.

Rusty hub's and loose lugs generally aren't related. Again, extremely rusty hub's are the only ones that are going to cause an issue.

Honestly now that I think about it, it makes sense they require clean hubs. Most tire """techs""" are fucking retarded, they need to be spoon-fed everything.

I just patch them myself. Tires don't last more than 3 years were I live.

One tech where I worked put the tires on a commercial van, didn't even thread any of the lugnuts on, and let them owners drive it away. Actually somehow made it a few hundred feet to the road where the wheels fell off and caused a huge accident.

And that's why techs have to use a torque stick as well as torque wrench on the tires, and a manager has to retorque the tires before it leaves, and why customers are asked to come back for re-torques every 500 miles. All because of, probably literally, that one asshole at my store.

The shops here do a combination plug_and_patch repair for each nail or screw hole. It's a free courtesy service for tires bought from them. It's why I go to shops like Les Schwab and Sam's Club for my tires.

>and why customers are asked to come back for re-torques every 500 miles
This is the first time I've ever heard of this.

>finding ALL the holes in it
>ALL the holes

You gotta be shitting me

Also the tire places use the same damn sticks you find at the autoparts store.

Yeah, one shop I worked at made us ask customers to do that, just to be safe.

It was only that one shop though, and they had huge issues with tires coming off because they trained retards poorly to change tires, so it's no surprise.

>You gotta be shitting me

Why? It was pretty common for a customer to try to patch their tire, so they'd just look at the tread, and the first screw or nail they'd see they'd pull it out and patch the hole, not realizing that particular nail didn't actually puncture all the way in, and wasn't the cause of the leak. So they'd make a new badly patched hole that leaked and made it worse. So when they finally brought it to the tire store we'd have to redo their patch, then find the other 1 or 2 holes that were the actual cause of the leak.

>Also the tire places use the same damn sticks you find at the autoparts store.

No they don't dipshit, most use patch/plugs, which are way superior than the faggot sticks. I guess in fairness I occasionally see patch/plugs at parts stores.

>had huge issues with tires coming off because they trained retards poorly to change tires.
Why am I not surprised?

Yeah, it basically was their business model to get the most dimwitted bunch of rejects they could, pay them poorly, then train them poorly to do their job, then they act surprised when tires are flying off left and right.

>ITT: not buying a $10 kiddie pool from kmart and using it as a dunk tank

or just use the bath tub

soapy waterrrrrrr

In a lot of states it isn't even legal anymore for a shop to use a plug, you have to use a patch plug like
Shops also generally won't repair a tire if the hole is towards the outside of the tread or at more than a 45 degree angle. If you plug it yourself you can't go back and do the repair properly, the hole will be too big. This doesn't mean shady shops won't do multiple patches, I pulled a tire off the other day and it had 3 patches including one on the edge of the sidewall. I believe these mandates were from a deadly Mercedes crash in Arizona determined to be from a plug that was just done at a shop, can't find a source though

If the damage is near, or on the sidewall, why not just slap one of these in?

Inb4 low profile, you fags deserve flats

Forgot pic

I once worked as a tire tech and an old man asked me to drop one of these in an old tire for him.
>muh liability

Amerikeks are such pussies

Agree on the leaking part. I see at least one car a week come in for a tire flat with the same style plug from op generously leaking.

Wouldn't give a fuck if it were my own, but no way was i gonna trog up some bullshit for free

Inner tubes are just air vessels. They don't have the structural integrity to support the car without an intact sidewall.

The shop I used to work at literally just used the generic reamer-and-brown-stick-style of fixing tires, it's the exact same thing you could do yourself with a $5 kit on Amazon. I'm sure some places do a better job but you won't know unless you go in and ask. Either find a nice place (impossible down here in the South) or just save yourself the hassle and do it yourself.

Perhaps if the sidewall is completely collapsed, or torn appart, but it works perfectly for tires with leaky sidewalls. Theres another bonus of less air leakage over time too.

There's no way the tech can tell if someone screwed a screw into the tire. Anytime a screw is in the tire, it can be unscrewed if the head hasn't been ground off.

Try telling that to farmers that have been using the same old tires on their trailers for decades.