A Thorn in My Paw

By thorn I mean a large metal nail that is used to put tags on the road and by paw I mean the tire of my car. A few months ago I must have driven over a loose road tag (which has a huge nail and a metal disk) because my tire kept clicking. It eventually stopped so I didn't think too much about it until my low tire pressure monitor light came on. The first time this happened, all my tires were low so I just thought it was due to the fluctuation in temperature, but then it came on again a few weeks later. When I checked my front tire (the one that was clicking) I finally found the culprit (please excuse our extremely dirty car)

Now, these are really nice tires my dad bought us for Christmas a few years ago. They are rated for 80,000 miles and they are nowhere near the end of their life so we took them over to a tire place to see if we could get it patched. Unfortunately, the answer was a no since the hole was too close to the side wall, but they suggested we get a tire patch and do it ourselves. I was skeptical but the guy said that it would hold an it was much cheaper than getting two new tires so we decided to give it a go.

I picked up a tire patch kit at an auto store and then Nate got to patching everything up. First Nate pulled out the nail using needle nose pliers.

Look how big that nail is!

Then he used the tool in the kit that roughs up the edges of the holes so the patch would stick.

Then he fed the piece of patch (a rubbery material) through a very large needle with a slit on the end. He pushed the needle through the hole in the tire and then yanked hard so that the slit in the needle would slip over the patch piece and come out of the tire. He trimmed the patch piece down to the surface of the tire, pumped the tire back up and then he was done!

We have now driven around on the patched tire for about a week and a half with no air loss. We're hopeful that this will be the final fix and we're happy that it only cost $7!