run flat tire

[animal163]

hi everyone, i know Run flat tire sounds great but what if you were out of town and you got a flat tire. Is great that you can run for additional 50 miles or so to a safe place, then what are you going to do next? you can't get the tire to fix a puncture so you must replace a new one. but my question is even if you don't might the price for replacing a new one everytime you get a puncture or a nail stuck in, how are you going to find a place that carries those run flat tire when you need them at your convenience? thx for all 2 cents

[Takashi]

That actually happened to me last week a few days before Valentine's day. Mine cost $29.00 CND to repair it.

Accoridng to the tire repairshop technician at Tire Warehouse, run flats CAN be repaired provided there are no damage to the sidewall. Standard (and ordinary) tire repair procedures need to be followed to properly repair a run flat tire. (i.e. take the tire out of the rim and patch the inside and the outside of the tire, then reinstall and rebalance).

[Grumpa72]

Fwiw, I fretted over this long and hard and I finally compromised. I bought a can of sealant, Fix A Flat iirc, and a heavy duty, but small, compressor. In addition, I got a Gorilla brand lug wrench with the metric heads and I found a scissor jack in my garage that actually fits the well of the plastic jacking spot. All of this fits in the well where the spare used to be in other cars.

All of this works as long as I don't get a sidewall blow out. In all of my too many years of driving, I have had four or five flats, all of them being foreign objects in the tread and never a sidewall failure. So, I hope this works. I will also be putting in a small plug kit. This should get me to a repair shop where a patch can also be installed.

Gary

[M62pwrdE38]

The reason that runflats can not be repaired is that it is hard to tell if the tire has been driven on flat or how far its been driven on with no air. Its not that the material of the tire isn't patch-able, its that if the tire has been driven on flat for a while the integrity of the sidewall is compromised and therefore the tire is not safe to be driven on. Also cans of fix it flat or whatever gunk you want to put in your tire to stop a leak will destroy your TPMS in that wheel if your car has it. Those sensors are not cheap at all.