Can flat tires be repaired

When Your Flat Tire May Need to Be Replaced

It’s easy to learn how to change a flat tire and install your spare. What’s not as easy is knowing when your flat tire can’t be repaired or patched, and when it will need to be replaced with a new tire. Here are 8 indicators you may need a new tire.

The tire has a sudden loss of air and you drive on it flat. This can cause internal damage, which can’t be fixed.

The sidewall has a puncture, a cut exposing the cord, or a visible bubble or bulge.

The shoulder has damage (more than cosmetic), such as a small puncture.

You spot a bulge on the tread or sidewall (following an impact, etc.).

There’s a gash deep enough to expose the nylon or steel belts (which are part of the internal structural components of the tire).

The size of the gash or hole in the tread is greater than one-quarter inch.

The tire has been repaired before and the new damage is close to the previous repair.

If for any reason the repair exceeds the tire manufacturer’s recommendations.

Underinflated Tires May Damage the Sidewall From Excessive Heat

Tires with low air pressure may be hard to detect while driving. An underinflated tire generates a lot of heat quickly, which may cause the sidewall to break down in seconds. Therefore, an underinflated tire can be damaged beyond repair within a short distance. Simply driving on a severely underinflated tire from the fast lane to the shoulder can cause irreversible damage.

Slow Leaks in the Contact Patch Can Be Repaired

If you have a slow leak from a puncture in the main part of the tread, chances are good the tire can be repaired. Done right, your repaired tire should be safe to drive on for its full tire life. Additionally, the repair may be free (depending on your warranty).

Les Schwab Tip: We do more than just patch tires. Our experts use a multi-step process to ensure your tire is properly repaired.

Basics of Flat Repair

First, the tire technician will identify the location of the leak and make sure there are no others by submerging the tire and wheel in water. Then they’ll take the tire off the wheel (called dismounting), and inspect the inside and outside for structural problems and previous repairs.

If the tire is repairable, they’ll start by buffing the affected area being careful to avoid any damage to the liner. Then they’ll use vulcanizing compound and a one- or two-piece plug patch combination to fill the hole and seal the liner. This method ensures an airtight seal and that the cord material is protected.

Do Emergency Tire Repair Kits Work?

If your vehicle doesn’t have a spare, or you need to get out of an emergency situation, you may be relying on a sealant kit or other quick-fix option when you get a flat. This isn’t a substitute for proper repair.

At Les Schwab, we’ve been cleaning, sealing, and repairing flat tires for a long time. We’ve seen a lot of do-it-yourself options over the decades, but emergency plug kits are not among the best options. The use of a plug kit to fill a hole from the outside of your tire can cause additional, internal damage that may be difficult or impossible to repair. Additionally, some aerosol sprays can damage the TPMS sensor in your wheel, which can be expensive.

Bring Your Flat Tires to Les Schwab

If you’re driving on a set of Les Schwab tires, we’ll fix your flat for free. If the tire cannot be repaired, we’ll show you all of your options and get you back on the road safely.

Schedule a Flat Repair

When Can a Tire Be Repaired?

From potholes to stray nails and screws, your tires can encounter a lot of hazards on the road. And when they become damaged or go flat, you might be wondering whether you should purchase a new set or get the tire repaired professionally.

Not every flat or punctured tire can be fixed, but there are other instances where you can get the tire — and your entire car — back on the road with a quick repair. Read on to learn what kind of tire damage can be repaired and when you should get a replacement.

What Kind of Tire Damage Can Be Repaired?

Can You Repair a Punctured Car Tire?

Puncture location and severity of damage can often be the deciding factors between getting a tire repaired vs. replaced. If you've got a tire that's been punctured in the tread area and it doesn't measure more than 1/4 of an inch (6mm) in diameter, a simple repair may do the trick.

If the tire has two punctures, getting a tire repaired may still be an option as long as the punctures are at least 16 inches apart and the maximum number of repairs does not exceed a total of 2 in the tire. Any more punctures than that, and you should consider getting a new tire. Punctured tires will likely need to be replaced if:

The puncture is more than a ¼ inch in diameter
There's a puncture in the sidewall or shoulder of the tire
You have multiple punctures that are less than 16 inches apart

Can You Repair a Run Flat Tire?

Durable run-flats, such as Bridgestone DriveGuard tires, can often buy you a little more time in a flat tire situation. But if driven on with less than 15PSI, they may not be repairable. To prevent this issue on run flats and otherwise, avoid driving your vehicle if you have a flat or are low on air.

Can Tires with Side Bubbles Be Repaired?

If you notice a bubble in your tire's sidewall, this has likely been incurred by high-impact damage. Factors like driving on a flat, hitting a pothole or curb the wrong way, riding over speed bumps or railroad crossings too quickly, or overloading your tires can all lead to this issue. Although this tiny bulge may not seem intimidating, tires with side bubbles are not repairable, and you should have the tire replaced as soon as possible.

Can You Repair Tires That Have Existing Repairs?

Repaired tires can often be mended again if the damage doesn't compromise a previously repaired area. For example, if you have a nail-in-tire situation, you may be able to do a quick repair if the puncture location doesn't overlap with a previous tire injury and the repair was done properly. If it does overlap, you will likely need a replacement.

Can You Repair a Tire After a Car Accident?

Oftentimes, affected tires will need to be replaced following a major incident. If the tire has sustained serious damage in a crash, such as significant cuts or tread separation, it should be replaced, not repaired.

Tempting Tire Repair No-Nos

You might be tempted to do a quick fix when you do have a flat or damaged tire. Here are two that can be used in emergency or short-term situations but shouldn't be considered long-term tire repairs:

Should You Use Sealants or Emergency Inflators?

These fast fixes are a double-edged sword. They'll help you get your car to a local Firestone Complete Auto Care, but don't count on them to keep you on the road for very long. Tire sealants can freeze in cold weather, damage your tire pressure monitoring system, and prove ineffective at repairing any tire damage that's more serious than a slow leak or small hole. It's also important to note that our technicians will not be able to fix punctures in tires with emergency temporary sealants.

When Can You Patch Up a Flat Tire?

Again, these are quick fixes that aren't meant to enable long-term use of a punctured or damaged tire. When considering a flat tire patch or replacement, remember that a patch doesn't fill in the hole left by a puncture — while a plug doesn't offer a permanent seal. In short, patching or plugging alone are never adequate long-term solutions. That's why at Firestone, our technicians can use a patch-plug combo to provide an adequate long-term solution for some tire punctures.

Taking Care of Your Tires

To ensure your tire is safely repaired or replaced, it's best to have it inspected and serviced by a trained technician. Visit your local Firestone Complete Auto Care and ask about our tire repair services. Your safety is our priority, and we back all of our work with a triple promise that guarantees your repair will be Fixed Right, Priced Right, Right on time.

Now that you know when to repair vs. replace a car tire, schedule your appointment today!

Flat tire repair and replacement

flat tire repairreplacement wheelspare tires

A flat tire checker not only saves your life, it saves your wallet. Therefore, at the first suspicion of a flat or damaged tire, immediately contact a service station. After checking, the specialist will advise you on what to do in your case - to repair or replace a flat tire.

If you are not sure that you can fix the problem of flat tires yourself, then it is better to seek help from specialists. They will look into your problem and advise you on whether to fix the damaged tire or replace it.

Also, truck tire shops can offer you useful services for longer tire life:

Eliminate punctures on the tread surface, up to 0.64 cm deep, if they are found in the tread part of the tire;
Prevent tire damage in the future;
Adjust tire pressure to manufacturer's recommended pressure.

Finding Damage

Initially inspect the tire for any stuck foreign objects. In their absence, we advise you to do the following manipulations:

Fill a bottle with a solution of water and vegetable soap, or a specific leak detection fluid recommended by the tire manufacturer.
Inflate the tire and spray the entire area with the prepared solution.
Inspect the tire for bubbles: bubbles will form rapidly at the puncture or cut site, as liquid will drain into the recesses of the treads.

Changing a tire

Here are some general guidelines for changing tires yourself. Be aware that changing a tire can result in personal injury and/or damage to the vehicle/tools. If you are not sure that you can change the tire yourself, contact your nearest workshop for help.

Pull over but stay on level ground.
Use all means of mandatory emergency signaling (emergency lights, emergency stop sign, etc. ), do not forget to put the machine on the handbrake.
Supports in front of and behind the wheel will give you good stability.
You will need a spare tire and a jack. If you do not know their location, the instructions for use will tell you this information.
Position the jack so that the body of the car is not damaged. If you do not know how to do it correctly, the instructions will help.
With the jack on the ground, raise the machine to the desired level.
To access the clamping nuts, remove the cap or trim cap.
Loosen the nuts by turning counterclockwise with a special wheel wrench.
When jacking up the vehicle, make sure that the damaged wheel can be removed freely.
Change the wheels and put the lug nuts back in place.
Tighten the nuts with a balloon wrench by turning it clockwise, but do not overtighten. Excessive force may push the vehicle off the jack.
Lower the jack with the vehicle on all four wheels.
Tighten the clamp nuts as tight as possible before driving.
After driving a few kilometers, stop and check the tightness of the clamp nuts.

What to do if a tire is punctured and what are the ways to repair it

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What to do if a tire is punctured and what are the ways to repair it

Author: Aleksey Kokorin

Experienced drivers are not surprised by such a trifle as a puncture, but for the first time beginners usually get confused in the sequence of actions, forget about important details and do not know what to do with a punctured wheel even in a tire shop - especially if they start offering choose from several options or intimidate with expensive repairs. Let's set up an operation algorithm when a flat tire is detected and figure out what to do right away and what to choose later.

What to do when you find a puncture

Having found a flat tire, first of all you need to stop in a safe place, turn on the emergency alarm, assess visibility and, if necessary, set an emergency stop sign: according to traffic rules, it is installed at least 15 meters from the car in built-up area and at least 30 meters outside the built-up area. When choosing where to stop, consider the space to the side of the vehicle to handle a flat tire. You should not stop right on the road and in places where stopping and parking are prohibited: even if a punctured wheel belongs to the conditions of a forced stop, it is quite possible to drive several tens of meters on it to choose a safe and convenient parking place. At night or in conditions of limited visibility (for example, in fog or rain), it is imperative to wear a vest with retroreflective elements - this is required by clause 2.3.4 of the SDA and common sense.

Now you can start working on the wheel. We will sequentially consider several options for action, and then move on to ways to repair a damaged tire.

The most obvious solution to a flat tire is to replace it. If you have a spare tire that you are sure is in good condition, the best option is to install it and visit a tire shop to repair a punctured tire - such repairs will be more reliable and of high quality than doing it yourself.

If you do not have a suitable spare tire, but you do have a pump or compressor, you can assess the damage to the tire and try to inflate it again to get to the tire shop. It is better to start searching for an air leak with a valve (aka “nipple” or “nipple”): often a faulty spool becomes the cause of a flat tire. It is easy to check it: unscrew the protective cap (if there is one), pour water on it (or slobber it, as in childhood): air bubbles will leak. In this case, you can try to replace the spool valve by unscrewing it and screwing in a new one, but if there is no new valve, as well as a store nearby, you can try just unscrewing and screwing it back in. Regardless of whether it helped or not, you need to visit a tire shop to replace the entire spool or valve.

If the valve is tight and the tire is flat, it is most likely a puncture. The easiest way to find a puncture that is free of foreign objects is to pour water on the tire while looking at the surface: the damage will reveal itself as air bubbles. However, often the cause of the puncture can be found along with it: a self-tapping screw, nail or other arbitrary object sticking out of the wheel will clearly indicate the place of depressurization. In this case, you do not need to immediately remove the foreign object from the tire: it partially seals the hole, and if the pressure loss is slow, you can try to pump up the wheel and drive to the tire shop.

The same goes for wheels that are leaking from the rim or from a faulty valve. Usually, in this case, the air is bled slowly, and you can pump up the wheel and have time to get to the place of repair. By the way, rim leakage can occur due to disk deformation upon impact - for example, when hitting a pit with sharp edges. Such situations are fraught with damage to both the disk and the sidewall of the tire, in which case the disk will need to be corrected, and the tire repaired or even replaced. To avoid rim leaks, you need to inspect the rims every time you change tires. The loss of tightness occurs either due to corrosion or due to disc deformation, and not only steel, but also light alloy wheels can corrode. So if you see paint blistering or rust on the rim, the tires need to be put on rim sealant: when changing tires, this will be cheaper than the subsequent removal and re-tire to fix a leak on the rim.

If you find a puncture, but there are no foreign objects in it, and you do not have a spare wheel and tire repair kits, there is another popular method of temporary "repair". You can screw a self-tapping screw into the found hole - if, of course, you have one. In extreme cases, you can look for a self-tapping screw in the cabin by unscrewing it from some interior detail. This method cannot be called reliable: it is unlikely to ensure complete tightness of the wheel, but at least it can help you get to the nearest tire shop.

And a couple more useful remarks. If the wheel is completely flat, then it is easier to inflate it without a spool: the latter must be unscrewed, then the tire must be inflated and quickly screwed back in. The fact is that the spool itself, when inflated, resists the compressor, and in the event of a loose fit of a flat tire to the disk, the power of a simple magazine compressor may not be enough, and the absence of a spool helps to increase air flow and facilitate the operation of the compressor. If this does not help, you can jack up the car by hanging a flat tire: this will improve the fit of the tire to the disk, and the chances of inflating the tire will increase.

Ways to repair on the spot

Now let's look at the options for self-repairing a tire using special materials that you should take with you or, if a puncture caught you in the city, buy at the nearest car shop.

1. The most common, cheapest and easiest way to do it yourself is to install a raw rubber band. The harnesses are sold complete with an abrasive awl to expand the hole in the tire and improve the contact of the repair harness with its edges, as well as a needle for installing the harness and an adhesive to fix it and at the same time seal the puncture. When choosing a repair kit in a store, you should pay attention to the following nuances:

the abrasive awl should not be too "toothy" to avoid damaging the cords - it should just push them apart and lightly work the edges of the hole;
the kit must have glue - without it, the tourniquet will hold in the hole worse, and there is a possibility that it will poison the air;

Install the harness in the following order. First, the found hole is expanded with an abrasive awl - you need to insert and remove it several times into the puncture site. Then the tourniquet is inserted into the eye of the needle, and glue is applied to it. After that, the needle with the tourniquet must be inserted into the hole in the tire and pulled out sharply - so that the tourniquet remains in the hole, and the needle comes out without it. If everything worked out, it remains only to cut the end of the harness flush with the surface of the tire and pump up the wheel.

The advantages of repairing with a harness are quite decent reliability, simplicity and low cost. On a well-repaired tire, you can drive for a long time, and if the repair site starts to poison, you can either replace the harness or have the tire repaired in a quality service. Among the minuses is the possibility of damaging the cord during installation, as well as lower reliability compared to “full-fledged” repair methods in a tire shop. Strictly speaking, a tourniquet is still a temporary repair, so if it is possible to pump up a wheel and get to a tire fitting, then it is better not to enlarge the hole in the tire and get to the experts.

2. The second repair option is aerosol liquid sealants sold in cans. To repair a punctured tire with sealant, you need to remove the foreign object from the puncture site, then pour the sealant into the wheel through the valve, twist it to distribute the composition inside the tire, pump up the wheel and drive several kilometers at low speed for the final uniform distribution of the sealant.

The advantage of this repair is that it is easier and less labor intensive than installing a harness. However, there are also disadvantages: the larger the hole, the higher the chance that the sealant will not be able to eliminate it, and such a repair can affect the wheel balance. Compared to a tourniquet, it can be considered even less reliable and preferable, but simpler.

Repair options at a tire shop

If you put on a spare tire and brought the wheel to a tire shop, you may also be offered several repair options. Consider the most popular with an indication of the advantages and disadvantages.

1. The first repair method is the same harness installation as described above. As we remember, the tourniquet refers to a temporary repair, so among tire specialists this method is considered bad form, but many workshops do not exclude it from the list of services. All the advantages and disadvantages are the same here: such a repair will be the fastest, simplest and cheapest, but less reliable than other methods. It is worth choosing it in cases where the price and / or speed of the procedure is more important to you than anything else. If quality is a priority, then it is better to fork out for the options listed below.

2. The second option for repairing a puncture is to install a patch on the inside of the tire, the so-called cold vulcanization. In this case, the tire is removed from the disk, the surface around the puncture is treated with an abrasive, and the damage is sealed with a special patch. This is a more preferred repair method than a tourniquet: it is more reliable and durable, especially in the case of side punctures, when not the thick tread part of the tire is damaged, but the thinner sidewall. Among the minuses, only a higher cost can be noted: in addition to the actual tire repair, you will have to pay for the removal and installation of the wheel (or do it yourself), tire fitting and balancing.

3. The third option is a "complex" of the first and second: installation of the so-called repair "fungus". The “hat” of the fungus is a patch, and the “leg” is threaded from the inside of the tire to the outside. After gluing the patch, the excess part of the leg is cut off, as in the case of the tourniquet. Thus, not only the inner surface of the tire is closed, but also the hole itself. The advantages and disadvantages of this repair method are generally the same as those of a patch.

4. An extreme, “emergency” measure when repairing a punctured wheel is to install a camera in it. Typically, this method is used for tires that are no longer worth repairing, or “for reliability” after repairing a complex puncture. It should be understood that almost all modern tires are tubeless, that is, they are not designed to install a camera, so it’s not worth driving a wheel repaired in this way for a long time. Installing a tube is a temporary solution for riding until a new tire is purchased, and sometimes such wheels are left as spares. So this repair method can be kept in mind as a backup.

In conclusion

We deliberately left out of this text such methods as combined repair of tires with a tourniquet and a patch and hot vulcanization. The first is used quite rarely and for specific damage, and it is enough just to know about its existence. Well, the second is used to repair serious side cuts, and it is not only rare, but also very expensive. The cut site in this case is prepared, filled with raw rubber and processed with a hot press for vulcanization. Equipment for this procedure is not available in every tire shop, and the cost of repair can be about half the cost of a new tire.

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