Necessity is the Mother of Inspiration...

I did a repair in a tire outside of the usual tire repair repertoire. I noticed my rear driver tire was losing air pressure. I pumped it up and over the course of a week it went down again. I pumped it up and decided the next time I would try to find the leak, as I could find no screw or nail in the tread. A week or so goes by and the tire is getting soft again and I remember finding one of those pins that have the "T" top stuck into the tire a little while back, but it didn't strike me as a problem.

I took the tire off and put some dawn cleaner in a bucket with water and started scrubbing the tread to see if there were any bubbles.... Nothing. I scrubbled the sidewalls and saw nothing. I went back and scrubbled it again and went about doing something else for a bit and turned back and saw a big bubble. Ah hah! Found it. The hole left by the pin in the side wall. I trucked myself down to Toyota to let them know my tire was leaking and asked to have them get me a new tire on my tires for life contract. So sorry, I did not buy the tire hazard, so I would have to buy the tire myself. $155 at the dealer and I don't trust them. So, now I go to the little local shop hoping he can put a patch on the sidewall... NOPE! Not going to do it.

SO now I have a tire that leaks that is basically a good, relatively new tire with a pinhole in the sidewall. All it needs is a smear over the hole on the inside and the leak will stop. So I noodled a bit and thought if I could get one of those little syringes and inject two part epoxy into the hole, it should solve my problem. I order a collection of syringes with blunt tips from ebay. I decided the best way would be to flatten the tire and then slide the needle up the hole and push the plunger on the way back out of the hole. I gave a little squirt as I pushed the needle in and the needle just slid in through the existing hole. I squeezed the epoxy on the way back through and screwed off for and hour or so. I went back and pumped up the tire and it seems to have solved the problem. Whoo hoo!

Originally Posted by 520

Nice fix! Now here is my fix I had to do several years back.

I was out in the middle of nowhere maybe down 20 miles of dirt road plus another 20-30 from any kind of services.

My first flat was no big deal because I had a spare.

The second flat was a big(ish) hole as I could hear it leaking as soon as it happened.

Now having worked at a tire shop have repair about a thousand tires. But I didn't have plugs with me.

What I did have was some black RTV silicone, a sock and a screw driver. Screw driver went in the hole first thing to slow the leak as i had no compressed air with me.

I cut about a 1in x 6in strip from the sock. I smeared the RTV silicone all over it working it into the fabric really well. I then folded it and tried pushing it into the whole with the screw driver but the screw driver went through the fabric.

So i twisted the fabric tight like I was ringing it out. With it twisted tight I was able to push it in without tearing it. Quick yank on the screw driver and I had perfectly plugged the tire.

It was pretty low on air at that point but just as luck would have it the next person driving down the dirt road happened to have a cig lighter compressor. So we smoked a couple bowls while that little thing filled up my tire.

I put at least another 5k on that tire.

Wow! Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. That right there was pretty inventive. Are you serious you drove it another 5k with that patch?