Can you teach me more about lug bolts & related tire tools?

Where do you lot live? Remind to stay right away.

What are you objecting to? The ability to pay =A310 to get a puncture f= ixed? Do you live in the Aussie outback or something?

-- =

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

I've got a Petzl Tikka headlamp in the car, along with a couple of flashlights. The advantage of a headlamp is the beam is focused exactly where you are looking rather than trying to position a separate light. The flashlights, one of which is 1000 lumens, allow for a wider beam.

Project fear continues!

These days a car factory in only in existence as long as the model it was built for is still in production. Manufactures wanting to build a new model prefer a green field sites in countries that gives them maximum grants and the labour cost is cheapest. In the case of western Europe its likely to be the former soviet aligned countries that will get future car manufacturing/assembly jobs.

Alternatively, Europe will be importing many of the cars from China or India.

Royal Music Association? I've had good luck with the common rope plugs, including on an almost new motorcycle tire. I rode home slowly but without any exciting events. A few more short trips without any disasters and I forgot about it. It did develop a slow leak by the time the tire was worn enough to be replaced.

I now carry Dynaplug kits on both bikes that have tubeless tires. Knock on wood, I have not had to field test them. On a bike you don't have the option of getting out the spare (unless you ride a Ural with a sidecar) so roadside repairs are a necessity. Speaking from experience, plugging a tubeless tire is a lot easier than breaking down a tubed tire and patching the tube while the bike is propped up on whatever you can find.

Someplace in the United Kingdom. I've managed to stay away all of my life. I've gathered it's not the country of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron anymore...

Rubber Manufacturers Association.

Short summary: All tire shops in the USA follow RMA guidelines (they must, by insurance rules and for legal liability reasons).

No professional would be caught dead using the rope plugs, even as we all know them to work just fine, in practice.

While almost all of us have had continued success with the emergency rope plug, they're forbidden in professional use for a variety of reasons, explained below by the TIA.

The Tire Industry Association decries use of the rope plug here:

Here's their video on the topic: Having said that, I reiterate we've all successfully fixed dozens of tires with the rope plugs, so all I'm saying is that there is a right way and a wrong way, and both ways have worked for all of us - but the right way is the right way for a reason.

I like doing things the right way, unless I'm stuck on the shoulder of the road, in which case the wrong way is the right way for that situation.

Here's a video of a guy plugging bike tires with a tubeless repair kit:

Take a look at that biker's concept of a "pocket knife" at 53 seconds! I'm curious if you mount and balance your bike tires? I did that when I owned a bike. It was hard to find a tire shop, nearby anyway, that mounted tires, so I learned how to do that myself. Bike tires are easier than car tires, which themselves are easier than SUV tires (all of which I've done) which are easier than truck tires (which I've never done).

Plugging from the outside is pretty simple on all tires.

Patchplugging from the inside is simple - if - if you have the tools, which cost about $150 and which last forever.

I agree that a headlamp has advantages, as does a magnetic lamp, where one of each might be perfect redundancy for a nighttime emergency at the side of the road.

What's odd about the troll James Wilkinson Sword is that he doesn't seem to understand the most basic and one of the simplest of human endeavors, which is that there is pleasure in doing things yourself, whether that be baking your own bread, whipping up your own mayonaise, growing your own tomatoes, fixing your own car, shoeing your own horse, helping an old lady across the street, learning something new, etc.

To him, it's only about his "ten quid".

Pot, kettle, black.

Compared to what's in my pocket at the moment...

After using it for a few years, I'm not that crazy about the tanto style, but it is good for prying out nails.

I mount the knobbies on the DR-650 myself but don't bother with the balance except for lining the dot up if there is one. With DOT knobbies it is sort of hard to tell if it's balanced or not. The last time around I went with Kendas and getting the bead to seat on the front was an adventure. I never had a problem with Dunlop 606's.

I take the ones with tubeless tires to a shop. After watching an guy trying to get the bead to seat on a Bridgestone as the sun sank into the west I was skeptical of my abilities. He had a high flow air system, the tourniquet, and so forth but it was a struggle. I might take a shot at it in the spring. I've got a slow leak around the bead on the Harley that needs to be cleaned up so it won't be a complete demount.

Truck tires are just bigger :) I watched a guy in Canada fix one in place. He had me drive the inside dual up on blocks to get clearance, spudded it off, patched it, and put it back on. I think he'd done it that way once or twice.

My first DIY attempt was with a '51 Chevy. iirc, the owners manual had an illustration of breaking the bead by putting the bumper jack on it. All I managed to do was jack the car up.

Sometimes I question my motivation, like last month when I was changing the oil in a cold drizzle. At least this year step 1 of putting the studs on did not involve boiling water and salt to release the bottom tire which was frozen to the ground. A little dunnage is a good thing.

I'm driving on a plugged tire right now. Last Saturday I was 600 miles from home and the only shop nearby was a truck shop. He plugged it but did not have the proper equipment to play with my wheels. I put about

2999 miles with no air loss so will go home on it too.

The drywall screw removed it still usable too!

Jesus. That's battle gear for heaven's sake!

This is what I consider to be a typical pocket knife.

The Harbor Freight tire mounting tool has an accessory for mounting motorcycle tires, but the HF static bubble balancer does not. AFAIK, most people statically balance motorcycle tires using a horizontal freely spinning bar, do they not?

I did bike tires in the 80s, before they were typically as fat as they are now (especially the rears), where it wasn't hard in the olden days, with a good tire iron and three hands.

I find that car tires are easiest on the import economy vehicles, and almost as easy on the European sport vehicles, but the sidewall and larger profile makes SUVs harder (at least the ones I've done), where I just ass-u-me that truck tires would be even worse.

I've seen every redneck method of breaking a bead that YouTube can fester, where the purpose-built HF bead breaker is the tool of choice for the home owner.

The main flaw of that bead breaker is that they try to limit the diameter of the wheels you can break the bead on by limiting the overall length of the teardrop-shaped base - so you have to "extend" the base by putting a board over it and then the wheel on top of that board.

The bead breaker attachment that comes standard with the HF tire mounting tool works fine on the import economy vehicles, and even works on the European sports cars, but it fails miserably (it bends out of shape) on the SUV tires I've tried.

I agree with you that reasonable men have successfully plugged a tire from the outside after pulling out the offending nail or screw, but we can't argue too hard since the logic of the inside path is that it supposedly stands the test of time and the elements better.

Still, none of us are complaining that the rope plugs don't work, so it's surprising that no professionals will dare to use the method we all swear by.

It's one of the enigmas of DIY home and auto repair.

I wish I had saved a jar of all the embedded objects I've pulled out of tires over the years!

I enjoy changing the oil where I've used those topside extractors, but I prefer lying under car just marveling at the engineering that went into building the thing as the hot oil drains completely out into a wash basin.

To the comment of the one oddball guy who actually thinks it's all about his "ten quid", I have rarely needed a mechanic, where each of my vehicles are all well over a decade old, so I have no idea what I'm actually "saving" by doing my own tire repairs, clutch, flushes, cooling system replacements, brakes, tire mounting and balancing, etc.

My days of living in snow country are long gone, where I remember having to freeze inside the car while the defroster laboriously attempted to clear the ice, and having to heat up the locks to defrost them after a freezing rain, and once, my aluminum door handle snapped right off my 280Z in the cold.

I'm glad I never will see cold weather ever again, except during visits to the snow.

1 : loose materials used to support and protect cargo in a ship's hold; also : padding in a shipping container 2 : baggage

When it's January and drizzling, you pull the drain screw and hesad inside for a cup of coffee.

The Toyota hasn't made ten years yet, but the rest of the fleet is at least 10. The elder members are the F150 I bought in '86 and the Harley I bought in '97. It probably was 20 years ago when I ran the pickup through an alignment shop after replacing some steering components just to make sure, but it was in spec. Other than that none of them has seen a mechanic other than me. When I was a kid my father told me if I intended to drive that way I did I'd better learn how to fix things. I did.

Can you say 'lawyer'? I've spent some time in southern AZ close to the border. It's refreshing to deal with Mexican mechanics. They still use a bit of ingenuity.

My winner is a screwdriver that embedded itself in the outside dual on a trailer. The handle was a little scuffed but it was still usable.

We won't go into bicycle tires. I hate goathead thorns and any place the damn thing grow.

So I'm told. I had to make a personal appearance at the SSI office a couple of weeks ago. The security guard said "You can bring in a small knife. That's a big knife.' so out to the car I went.

I've got one of those I found by the side of the road. I guess it's the Officer' model with the toothpick, tweezers, and other strange stuff. I never carried it. This is Montana; we subscribe to the Crocodile Dundee School of Knives.

Yes. I'll probably pick one up and see if it makes any difference the next time around. Knobbies give you plenty of practice. 5K on the rear is doing good.

I haven't used it yet but I picked one of these up:

The DR is 4.75 x 17 for the rear and 3.00 x 21 for the front although I've run 5.10 on the rear. They're started to go to the 120/90 stuff for knobbies but I'm used to the older sizing.

BIG tools :) Breaking the beads with a sledge hammer, or rather something like a cross head splitting maul is common.

Back in the '60s Harbor Freight and Chinese stuff was well in the future. Real tools cost real money. The cellar had a door through a poured concrete wall that was sturdy. You could do strange stuff with a scissors jack. You could also launch stuff when you were trying to compress the coil springs on your Healey... I was literally a shade tree mechanic. There was a handy maple with a branch that was just right for pulling engines. Much ambition, little money, get 'er done.