Need your advice on a good inside automotive tire patch

All my family cars have 2 sets of tires on OEM wheels.(summer and winter) I swap them out when season changes, rotate them as well at home.

Reply to
Tony Hwang
Loading thread data ...

I found out tire jobs at dealers don't really cost more. Same with any service at dealership where we purchase(trade in) our cars.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Harbor Freight is the LAST place I'd buy tools. I have been dissatisfied with almost everything from them. If I want cheaper tools, I usually buy the "Toolshop" branded stuff from Menards. Most of their tools have been fairly decent. Otherwise I'll pay the higher price and get Craftsman or at least the middle of the road brands like Stanley or Black & Decker.

Reply to
Paintedcow

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:45:00 -0500:

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know what you're saying even BEFORE you said it.

All I can tell you is that I bought the tools. I then mounted only 5 tires on BBS rims with the HF mounting tool. I balanced each one meticulously with a static balancer from HF. And my car does NOT shake shimmy or vibrate at any speed.

What does *that* tell you?

If my car shook, shimmied, or vibrated, *then* I would start looking at balance (among a ton of other things like suspension and tire pressure differences and tread differences and shocks, alignment, etc.).

That's all I can tell you.

Clearly, if my tire vibrated at speed, I would take it to a shop, and pay them $30 to test ride the car, and then they would *tell* me if it was alignment or balance or a worn suspension, etc.

What I'm saying is that you do NOT need to ALWAYS dynamically balance. If you mount your own tires, you get the CHOICE.

I do realize that if you have a shop do your tires (which 99.99999% of you do), then dynamic balance is thrown in with the standard charge, so there is no sense in NOT getting dynamically balanced.

But, in "my" case, dynamic balancing would be a waste.

Or, are you saying, that I secretly have a vibration that I don't know about yet?

Reply to
Danny D.

What's that got to do with the price of chicken milk on thursdays??? We are talking about REPAIRING a tire.

Reply to
clare

I should add that with the strings, you stuff the folded string in the hole, then when the probe is in the tire, you rotate it a couple turns, and that make a "ball" of string inside the tire, so the string doesn't come out. That's why the probe shouldn't be a comple 0, but have an opening in the side, like a C, so that it will come loose and you can pull it out without any of the string.

They worked well too.

Some webpage pointed to by some post here said holes up to 1/4" but my impression is that a 3/8 or evne 1/2 screw makes a hole that is bigger than 1/4" when something is holding the hole open, but closes down to almost nothing when the screw is removed. ???

Reply to
Micky

I can generally also buy the parts I require to do my own repairs cheaper from the dealer than from the autoparts store - and almost ALWAYS cheaper than on-line when you factor in the shipping.

Reply to
clare

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:32:24 -0500:

This I thought was a joke, but, I called Wheel Works, and guess what! If I bring in the tire, they will patch it with the plug/patch, for free!

Yep. For free! Woo hoo.

It doesn't matter that Tire Rack sold me the tires and that I installed them myself.

Perfect.

  1. I can remove the tire easily.
  2. I bring it to Wheel Works
  3. They patch it correctly, for free.

I asked them over and over again "are you sure it's free?", and they said yes. I told them they're crazy; but I like their kind of crazy.

I'll let you know what happens.

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:33:36 -0500:

Specifically about:

  1. Removing and replacing the tire on the rim ourself, and,
  2. Patching a hole in the tire, and,
  3. Perhaps dealing with balance issues thereafter.

Choosing the patch seems to be *easy* now that I know there is only one kind of patch to choose.

BTW, I called Midas (whom I hate), Goodyear, and Wheel Works. Midas and Goodyear only patch or plug but not both. Wheel Works does a patch/plug, and they do it for free!

No more calls for me. That's too easy to ignore.

I will let you know what happens (I accidentally left the key in the ignition when I needed to straighten the wheels to jack up the car so I'm charging my battery as we speak).

Sigh.

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:40:32 -0500:

I have a beemer. It breaks a lot.

The dealer service department gives me plenty of free soda and coffee. And then they charge four hundred dollars to replace a battery.

No thanks.

Reply to
Danny D.

Danny D. wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 21:44:31 +0000:

The bimmer costs even more because it has twice as many wheels and a far larger battery.

No thanks on anything at the dealer other than a warranty or recall repair (which should be free).

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:34:53 -0500:

I must agree that *shipping* on tires from Tire Rack, even when it just ships by UPS from Nevada to California, still costs about $25 per tire.

So, at $100 per tire times five, the tires cost $500 but shipping alone is $125 which is huge compared to the sales tax on $500 which is only about $50 (roughly) if bought at a tire store.

So, the way to go, if you can find it, is to find a place that *matches* tire rack prices for the tires, and then it only charges the 10% (or whatever) sales tax, and then you have no shipping costs.

Tires are odd that way, because they cost a *lot* to ship. Usually shipping and tax cancel each other out; but not with tires.

Sigh.

Reply to
Danny D.

Paintedcow wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:15:16 -0600:

I know. I know. I know.

When I was looking for balancers and tire changing tools, I found better ones (Northern?) but they also cost more.

If I were to do the job once a month or so, it would pay to get the better tools. I agree.

But, how often do you really change all your tires? I do it once every couple of years at most.

So, in the next 20 years, I'll change tires about 10 times. For that, the HF tire-changing tool works just fine.

PS: I had to bolt it to a pallet though, as there's no way you can use it without mounting it to something sturdy.

Reply to
Danny D.

Tony Hwang wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 13:36:21 -0700:

Of course I do. I balance them *statically*. If you want, I'll snap a picture of my mounting and balance tools.

I use the stickon weights from HF. I bought quarter ounce zinc weights (California has a thing about lead). But I found 1/2 ounce is fine so next time I'll buy 1/2 ounce instead.

There is no vibration. At any speed. Yes I fully know EVERYONE swears you must dynamically balance. I know that.

But, guess what? My wheels don't vibrate. At any speed.

So what does that tell you?

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:37:51 -0500:

I keep the T-shaped handle thing in my car for emergencies. What I really need, for emergencies, is air. I keep buying that liquid-air stuff, and it keeps going bad.

What I really need is simply a tire-valve-hose.

That way, I can suck some air out of the other four tires to fill the one tire that is temporarily patched from the outside in a super emergency.

Problem is, there are never any emergencies. The spare works just fine when I get a flat.

So, why repair on the road from the outside?

Reply to
Danny D.

When I worked for Sears around 1970 all we had was the bubble balancer. I was told to slide the weights around the wheel in pairs, put one on the bottom and then put the other on the top for the final balance. Don't know if this did anything,but was the standard for them.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I did see a man put the patch on his tire and use one of the battery powered pumps to pump up the tire. Not sure if he had a spare or not. It was on something like a station wagon and to get to the spare he would have had a long time removing all the stuff he had in the back over the tire.

A girl was over at our house visiting my son. She had a flat and I changed it for her. Her trunk was filled with stuff. It took her about 20 minuits to get it all out. Yard looked we were having a yard sell.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I'll continue to use my 12 volt compressor from Harbor Freight.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Some tires give you a choice. Some don't I have installed sets of tires that didn't even need ANY balancing to run at extra-legal speeds with no shake - but they are extremely rare.

I've likely installed as many sets of tires as anyone here on this list - some years installing over 1800 sets . Most years of my 25 "active" years well over 400 sets.

I've used bubble balancers, on-car spin ballancers, and computerized dynamic ballancers from at least 4 manufacturers.

A large percentage of tires have a significant dynamic inballance. Some cars are not fussy about dynamic balance - others are very fussy.

Reply to
clare

The hole in the cords of the tire are the size of what goes through - and the "plug" needs to fill the hole right to the cords - so no - the hole sdoes not "close in" requiring or allowing a smaller plug. It closes down to LOOK like a smaller hole.

Reply to
clare

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.