What percentage of flat tires can be saved?

Simple Tire runs so many deals their discounts are like spam in your inbox.

Generally you end up with one tire free for every four tires you buy.

Obviously the size matters but for example, that first hit is $109 Second hit is $112 but of course it matters exactly which model. Third hit is also $112 but that's before any promotional deals. Usually Simple Tire doesn't have shipping charges. If they do, you can add a lot, maybe $15 per tire.

Depending on the state, there may be no sales tax either.

I carry a breaker bar and sockets that fit the lug nuts. I've had too much experience with those OEM wrenches that don't fit anything known to man. I also carry a bottle jack although the OEM scissors jack works well.

In the rare cases where a tire shop has put the wheels on I immediately go home and attempt to remove them. I have an impact wrench for the ones the Amazing Hulk tightened. Then I replace them to a torque that I can remove.

If someone hasn't mounted/balanced tires, then the only thing they usually know about mounting or balancing tires is what their momma told them.

Which is not much.

Mounting and balancing tires has been done by hand for ages, and there's nothing special about current tires other than they're even easier to do.

People who say it's hard are the same people who say mowing is hard work. The real reason they come up with crazy excuses is that they don't like it.

If all you know about balancing tires is the advertising that Hunter spews trying to make the average mom and pop consumer think they need space-age balancing, then you don't know that static balancing works just fine most of the time, & even if it's slightly off, driving will tell the truth.

Static balancing, when done at home, takes far less weight than dynamic and road force balancing takes in the shop because you do the job right first.

You first balance the wheel and then you balance the tire on the wheel. Then you drive it, and if there's no vibration, they're balanced.

There's no such thing as imperceptible wheel or tire vibration. Just like there's no such thing as a weed that a lawn mower can't see.

The vibration thing is an imaginary boogeyman. Hunter created it. Read their literature on how to sell the service.

They tell the technicians to scare the crap out of you on vibration. It's a scam to sell services which aren't needed almost all the time.

Sure, a bad tire comes off the lot every once in a while. With electronics today, it's a lot less than Hunter would have you think.

There's no excuse for not balancing your tires in your own garage. Unless you can't find a flat spot that is a foot and a half wide, that is.

It's only people who don't want to do the job who make up crazy excuses. They shouldn't be on this ng if they have to make up excuses like that.

It's quick. It's easy.

It's safe. It's effective.

Just like putting on a condom. If you don't want to wear a condom, you'll come up with reasons why not.

Same here. The only ones worried about it are those who don't like doing the job.

I've done it. Many times. It's easy. Most of the time. You'll never fail. I've made every mistake you can make and I corrected every one by now.

Although there are still a few handy tools I haven't gotten around to buying, mostly because the tools I have haven't failed me on any tire.

However, the smaller the tire, the easier it is. Also the lower the load range, the easier it is.

I've done from econobox tires to LT tires with that HF tire mounting kit. Ask me any questions you want.

Anyone saying it's difficult has never done it. Anyone saying it takes too much time has never done it. Anyone saying it's too dangerous has a low tolerance for danger.

It's kind of like when people say making your own salad dressing is hard. They say you can't make soup or you'll end up poisoning the whole family.

If you want to do it, you'll experiment & buy the tools & learn the steps. If you don't want to do it, you'll make up any reason why you can't do it.

It's no different than anything else.

Like welding, or jumping out of airplanes, or fixing your own sprinklers. If someone wants to do it, it's easy to do (doesn't take special skills).

If someone hates to do it, they'll come up with all sorts of reasons, but you know they're fibbing when they bring up danger or that you can't do it right - as that's just their excuse for why they don't like doing it.

If they're that afraid, they should lock up all the doors & windows and stay home with the shades drawn and a loaded shotgun and pistol too.

The rest of us just do it. Ask me any question you want.

I've done it many times. Never failed even once.

Tires are auto, not home repair. Few here can justify the cost of equipment to do it properly. In the past 8 years I bought 4 tires, had one repaired. No way I can justify buying the equipment and doing the labor. It would be a big loss compared to investing that money and paying labor as needed.

Just because you can, does not mean you should.

They sell for maybe 70 or 100 dollars simple metal lever machines to break the bead and remove a tire from a rim, but tire beads are a lot stiffer than they were in the 1930's, you'll be worn out maybe even before you've finished one tire, and you'll never see a tire shop using a manual version. The pneumatic versions are as big as a short washing machine and cost, I'm sure, 1000 dollars or more. Plus you need a good source of compressed air.

Yes, for sure**

Everyone here keeps calling them plugs but there is a difference between plugs and strings and strings have replaced plugs. Looking to see if the web agrees with me I found

to use a tire PLUG the right way, but when you look at the picture, they're using a string, not a plug. And this is a NAPA url!! The autoparts chain!! How come they don't know what they are called.

The word "string" is nowhere in the article!! But plug means something different. They were rubber, cylindrical, harder to put in, sometimes they ripped in half when you were trying to stuff them in a small hole, and they had to be coated by the user by what seemed like rubber cement. They started selling strings maybe 30 years ago and maybe too many people are too young to remmeber the distinction.

This one calls them strings:

**And you're right about high-speed blowouts, adventurous to say the least, but I still like to tell this story. I had driven all day so I asked a friend to drive when we went out for another hour, and we took my car, a full-size Catalina. She owned a VW bug and when we got back to her apartment, she drove head in and rammed the curb with my right front tire. The next morning, I'm passing a semi at 65mph and I hear a bang. It blew out where she hit the curb. I slowed down and pulled over, but the car itself never missed a beat. I was amazed and I don't expect such good luck again.

I've done the job of mounting, balancing & patching many times. The "properly" part is trivial. So is the cost of the equipment.

To do it properly takes only your ability to learn basic things. Ask me anything you want about how to do the job properly.

See if you can find anywhere where I'm not doing it properly at home.

The equipment pays for itself so the only real cost is the storage of it. People who have no place to mount the changer, for example, can't do it.

The main justification is whether you want to do the job or not. If you do the job, you know it's done right.

If you pay someone to do the job, it will almost always be done wrong.

But you might not care if they do some things wrong, like someone said they have to check the lug nut torque, or the air pressure, or they scratch the rim, or they don't mount the valve stems where they should have put them or they didn't use a patchplug or they ripped off your wheelcovers wrong.

Whatever they can do wrong, they will do wrong because they don't give a shit about your car or your tires or your wheels.

They're doing it for cash. Like contract soldiers. You're doing it for yourself.

People who don't want to do it for themselves will always find a justification of why they can't or don't want to do it for themselves.

To me, having someone do it for me is like paying them to wipe my ass. But to others, it's like paying someone to clean up the toilet afterward.

The only thing different is the attitude of the person. Ask me anything you want about how to do the job properly.

It has nothing to do with can you do it or should you do it. Whether or not you want to do it is the only thing that ever matters.

It's kind of like justifying whether you should hire a landscaper or not.

If you hate trimming your roses, then you'll find reasons to hire him. If you think you need too many tools, you'll find reasons to hire him. If you are worried you'll get injured, you'll find reasons to hire him.

It's not a question of can you or should you pay someone to trim roses. It's only a question of whether or not you want to do your own trimming.

Come to think of it, trimming roses probably is more difficult than mounting and balancing passenger car and light truck tires at home.

Ask me anything you want about how to do the tire changing job properly. (I don't know anything about how to trim rosebushes so don't ask me that.)

Yes, indeed. The used tire store I wrote about earlier is in the center city, Also, when an exhaust pipe broke at a joint in front of the muffler and I went to a suburban muffler shop, all he was willing to do was replace most of the system. I headed for downtown and found a pretty big, nice looking garage and he welded the two pipes back together. Let me watch, did a very good job, one full bead and then another on top of it. It lasted as long as I had the car.

In theory the treads should match but on a dry road if you're not doing doughnuts or wheelies, I don't think it's worth worrying about. When I did buy two front tires, the used store had matching tires, but if he hadn't, that would have been okay too.

See another of my posts about that.

I didn't know we had to answer in a particular order.

One time I was dressed up and about to go to a rally for a political candidate I was working for. And I got a flat and it was raining. Instead of changing the tire in the rain, I drove about 1000 feet to a garage and no doubt about it, I ruined the tire.

Water Displacement, Formula #40. It's not a lubricant, sealer or rust preventer.

You said two things right and one thing wrong. It's just loony that you think it takes some kind of special strength.

It doesn't take unusual strength that any normal man doesn't have. That's what the fulcrum leverage is for.

If you have strength to lift a tire off the ground, that's all you need.

That's a goofy comparison.

The professional machines are designed to save the mechanic's time. they're also designed to be used by someone who isn't all that smart. And to be used after a lot of training. But also to be used without supervision. And yet to have as much safety and speed as is possible.

And to work on many sizes of tires. For thousands of tires a year. And to be quick & easy to repair when/if the machine suddenly breaks down.

And... and... and... and....and...and... (the list goes on and on).

The point is that you can't compare something like a $100K alignment machine to a $5 protractor and plumb bob when both have the same accuracy.

They're completely different tools because their goals are different.

That's just silly.

If you don't have a compressor that can fill a passenger car tire or light truck tire with air, then you bought the wrong air compressor. Return it.

That's irrational.

It's like saying you shouldn't mow your lawn because losing a lawnmower blade at speed is quite an exciting adventure. It's just ridiculous.

It's no less safe to mount & balance or patch your own tires at home than it is to pay someone else to mount & balance or patch your tires in a shop.

If you think it is, you'd better justify why as it's an absurd statement.

This is the type of part I use.

I try to buy the smallest kit that I think I'll need so that they're fresh.

I'm sure some shops might use them, but they are really for homeowners.

You'll find different types of kits depending on the type of search.

This, for example, nets you homeowner garbage tire patch kits.

Those homeowner kits work, but these are more for the pros to use.

I once passed a stopped semi on the side of the road, and BANG! Smoke! WTF? What happened!!!!! I pull over, and the smoke is gone. WTF?

Turns out it was the bottom of a hill. The driver's brakes overheated. He pulled over to let them cool down. The moment I passed them, the heat blew out one of their inside tires. That was the bank and instant smoke.

Regarding mounting and balancing tires at home for your car or light truck, there's no more danger than there would be if someone did it in the shop.

Ask me anything you want to know about mounting & balancing tires at home. I've done it many times.

That's the part I was wondering about the most. How long can you drive on a flat before the tire is ruined?

If it's only 1,000 feet, I'll bet a lot of tires have that on them because you have to get out of the traffic and find a safe spot to park the car.

HOw do you know what is an excuse and what is a reason?

How do you know if a reason is WHY someone doesn't want to do something, versus something thought of later? I plan ahead and my reasons are reasons.

I'm sure your wife woudn't work out for me.

I love working on my car. I almost wish it would break more often so I could do more things. When a drug made me drowsy and I hit the curb and had to replace the half-axle, ball joint, brake disc and one other part, it was the most fun I had all year.

But I still don't want to remove tires from rims. It's more work than it's worth and there are shops that have pneumatic tools that go bing, bam, bom and it's doen. (Although I think $20 is an old price and it's closer to 40 now.)

And I don't want to have to bolt the manual tire machine to the garage floor.

I did an oil change once. I even bought the constainer that lies on its side and collects the oil. Then I had to go find someone to take the oil. Once is enough. Now I pay someone who is all set up. It's the same reasosn I don't make my own nails or aluminum foil.

Humble, I don't think so.

Real spares on my husband's and my Toyotas. His is on the rear door; mine is slung underneath, between the rear tires (IIRC). The last time I had a flat, I called AAA. The guy nearly burst a vein trying to get the tire out from under the vehicle. What a stupid design.

This is exactly the one I bought from Walmart Canada. The description clearly says it is non-flammable. And I have just found the empty bottle to read the ingredient. The propellant is nitrogen.

Slime 60184 Thru-Core Tire Sealant, TPMS Safe, 454g , Green

New Thru-Core Technology means there is no need to remove the valve core • Seals punctures up to 1/4" in seconds • Sealant tested and approved by leading automakers • No jack or tools required • Safe and easy • Great for use in an emergency • TPMS safe • Non-toxic and non-hazardous • Non-flammable • Non-corrosive, making it safe for finished metal wheels • Environmentally friendly and cleans up with water • Requires air • Effective under extreme temperatures (from -37°C to 83°F).

The Canadiantire.ca website has the photo of the complete backside of the bottle (the photo in the middle). It lists the ingredients as "water, SBL rubber, modified rosins, glycerol, and nitrogen propellant.

The amazon ad someone posted (you, I think) said it "must be removed".

I think the company's law firm told them to say that.

If you read the product reviews on the Amazon website, most of the raving reviews are from people using it to stop slow leaks.

My two Toyotas, nearly identical 2000 and 2005 Solaras, only had donuts but the well, under the trunk floor, was big enough for a full size spare. So why did they put donuts in it?

Wow, I assumed there was some good way to get those out, but if the AAA guy didn't know it, maybe it really is stupid.

Maybe that AAA guy was a new hire.

Or rusted so bad it was difficult to remove. OTOH, some come off too easy. Toyota had a recall about 9 years ago. I've seen in happen and the driver did not notice.

Front wheels can come off too