Tire Repairs: Show your repair and tell your story

teotwaki

Excelsior!
I currently have the Extreme Outback kit as well as tire irons and a bead breaker. I recently had a shop handle a repair for me because they had these nifty plug/patches from Xtra-Seal. O'Reilly and other stores sell them, about $20 for 15 of them

http://www.31inc.com/Products/Category/universal-quilled-combination-units

$_35.JPG


Story time: Long, long ago while driving my 1989 Bronco...

I used to got out exploring a lot and a friend who would usually drive his own Blazer but on this trip he was riding with me. We spent the weekend exploring along the north-western border of the USMC's 29 Palms playground. Before too long I heard the swoosh-swoosh of a bad tire leak so we pulled over and swapped in the full sized spare. The hole in the damaged tire looked way too big to plug so we mounted it on the truck's tire carrier in the back. Not 30 minutes later we had a far worse puncture from what looks to be a large piece of machined steel shrapnel from some sort of ordinance. I still have that jagged piece of steel!

Okay! So I pull out the cheesey-cheapo auto store tire repair kit and the plugs have all disintegrated into a gooey puddle. Dang. What to do? Hmmmm.

Good old duct tape! I wound up some cylinders and coated the heck out of them with glue. I put three "plugs" into the gash of the first damaged tire along with more cement and waited a good 20 minutes for it to dry. I cut off the excess tape that was sticking out and cautiously aired the tire up to 25 pounds and no leaks! We drove very slowly out to Highway 40 and cruised slowly to a decrepit building that had a sign advertising tire repairs.

The guy who ran the place was a good ol' Hillbilly-'merican and when he took the tire off the rim he said in a bemused tone "Did you do that???"
After admitting my guilt he said "Well, that's purty good! I hain't never seen nuthin like that!!"

I convinced him to just use better plugs and a patch so that I could go find a new tire. He did a great job and asked for very little payment. These days I try to inspect my repair kits well before I head out.
 

Arclight

SAR guy
This sounds like my experience with Ludlow. That railroad siding is covered with super-sharp gravel. Also, we woke up at 0600 when we heard heavy machine guns and mortar fire just over the hill. Good times.

Arclight

I currently have the Extreme Outback kit as well as tire irons and a bead breaker. I recently had a shop handle a repair for me because they had these nifty plug/patches from Xtra-Seal. O'Reilly and other stores sell them, about $20 for 15 of them

http://www.31inc.com/Products/Category/universal-quilled-combination-units

$_35.JPG


Story time: Long, long ago while driving my 1989 Bronco...

I used to got out exploring a lot and a friend who would usually drive his own Blazer but on this trip he was riding with me. We spent the weekend exploring along the north-western border of the USMC's 29 Palms playground. Before too long I heard the swoosh-swoosh of a bad tire leak so we pulled over and swapped in the full sized spare. The hole in the damaged tire looked way too big to plug so we mounted it on the truck's tire carrier in the back. Not 30 minutes later we had a far worse puncture from what looks to be a large piece of machined steel shrapnel from some sort of ordinance. I still have that jagged piece of steel!


Okay! So I pull out the cheesey-cheapo auto store tire repair kit and the plugs have all disintegrated into a gooey puddle. Dang. What to do? Hmmmm.

Good old duct tape! I wound up some cylinders and coated the heck out of them with glue. I put three "plugs" into the gash of the first damaged tire along with more cement and waited a good 20 minutes for it to dry. I cut off the excess tape that was sticking out and cautiously aired the tire up to 25 pounds and no leaks! We drove very slowly out to Highway 40 and cruised slowly to a decrepit building that had a sign advertising tire repairs.

The guy who ran the place was a good ol' Hillbilly-'merican and when he took the tire off the rim he said in a bemused tone "Did you do that???"
After admitting my guilt he said "Well, that's purty good! I hain't never seen nuthin like that!!"

I convinced him to just use better plugs and a patch so that I could go find a new tire. He did a great job and asked for very little payment. These days I try to inspect my repair kits well before I head out.
 

Arclight

SAR guy
I am not sure on the Dalton but I know in Maine when they grade the logging roads in the spring it turns up all the rocks and those sharp edges love to eat tires. On a trip with two vehicles one year we had 5 flats between the two vehicles. Had to wait in the rain for a few hours while one tire was dragged out to civilization for a patching. The key is to keep the speeds under 40-45 mph or so which we had not done. Rather go slower and avoid the flats for sure.

I didn't have a problem on the Dalton Highway. But I did get a flat tire in a rental car on the road to Kennecott/McCarthy. That road is a 60 mile railroad grade with the tracks pulled up. In between the sharp gravel and the occasional spike, we got unlucky. Fortunately, there's a tire guy right at the beginning of the road.

Arclight
 

teotwaki

Excelsior!
This sounds like my experience with Ludlow. That railroad siding is covered with super-sharp gravel. Also, we woke up at 0600 when we heard heavy machine guns and mortar fire just over the hill. Good times.

Arclight

As well as noisy stuff like this running by!
MRAP_A-1.jpg
 

Crom

Expo this, expo that, exp
Last week, my almost 5-year old daughter was doing a tire inspection when she discovered this large gash in the sidewall of my Durtrac. I was very grateful for her discovering this and made a big deal about her bringing to my attention. A week prior we ran the Laurel Lakes trail in the Eastern Sierra's. I'm not sure if the damage was from the trail or from something else. I swapped it to an extra Duratrac that I had on standby. My instincts tells me we probably would have died if that sidewall let go on the interstate at interstate speeds.

I'm done with the beat-up Duratracs, and will be getting new tires in the next 6-8 weeks.

IMG_20150724_150836.jpg


IMG_20150724_150919.jpg
 

emtmark

Austere Medical Provider
9972981ae33b596e4e853a46b943ab1c.jpg
not as sexy as you guys but lessons I learned on the trail saved me from being late to work

Bolt about 5/8” took two plugs 101 north about 0900hrs


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

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