How to Plug a Tire Using a Tire Repair Kit

Description

How to Plug a Car Tire Puncture. A demonstration of how to use an automotive tire repair kit to make a repair to a hole in a tire caused by a nail or screw. A screw is removed and the tire is plugged. Leak testing & follow-up air pressure checks are discussed.

Available on Amazon:  Tooluxe Tire Repair Kit

Welcome to the Grok Shop! In this video I’m gonna show how you can repair your tire from a puncture caused by a nail or a screw using a kit from Amazon which costs about the same amount as it cost to take it to the shop and have it repaired there. So you can see a screw I found embedded in one of my tires just by random inspection. This is a great example of why you want to be checking your tires at regular intervals maybe once every time you stop to get gas or something like that, because if you don’t catch it in time, you will end up with a flat tire and of course, more headaches. So it is very much possible to make this repair with the wheel on the car, especially if it’s one of the front wheels because you can turn the wheels out and rotate the tire so you can get to the damaged area more easily. The rear wheels are a little more difficult. My puncture is actually on the front tire but in the interest of better quality videos I decided to take it on off. So here of course I’m just loosening up the lug nuts with the wheels still on the ground. Next we’re going to jack it on up with our hydraulic floor jack and find that nice flat spot on the frame. This is a Honda Element and this is really the best spot on these cars. So now I’ll just ease her on down onto a jack stand, back out the lug nuts the rest of the way and take the wheel on off. Next just prop the wheel up on something stable. OK, at this point we don’t want to completely remove the foreign object but I’m just making a quick check to see what I’m going to need since it’s a screw and in a lot of cases you can just literally unscrew it so here I’m going to just test it out and partly unscrew it and screw it back in a little bit. For this project I’m trying out a new kit from Tooluxe. It’s pretty cool; it’s got a rasp, it’s got some grease, the needle of course and the strings and it comes with this case. Now one thing the kit doesn’t come with is vulcanizing glue. Sometimes you may want to add vulcanizing glue if you have a particularly large hole or if you’ve made a repair without the glue that started to leak. If you’re considering buying one of these kits I think this one represents a pretty good value. I’ll link it in the description below for you guys. So in the first step we want to get our rasp out and then optionally you can grease it up by adding some of the included silicone grease. It helps to get it started, but the idea of the rasp is you want to make the hole a uniform size so that the plugs will fit in there well. So I’m just going to rub the grease all up and down the edge of the rasp here. Next I’ll go ahead and unscrew the screw from the tire and I’ll be ready as soon as the screw comes out to insert the rasp so I don’t lose too much air pressure & I don’t need to re-inflate it. In order to do the repair, depending on the size of the puncture you have, it might take a little bit of elbow grease to get the rasp tool all the way in. Once you get it in there you just want to keep twisting it, moving it up and down some, and you’ll know when it starts to get a little easier to move – your hole is ready to go. Next up we’ll be using the needle or insertion tool. I chose to add grease to this as well. It’s not totally necessary but it doesn’t really hurt anything and it may help seal the hole up even better. Okay next we’re going to grab a string and insert it through the eye of the needle. These strings are super sticky. If you scrunch flat one end of the string, it’ll help it to go in the needle easier. Pull the string halfway through the needle so it’s even on both sides okay next we want to pull the rasp on out and begin inserting our string. To get the string in, we’ll just push straight in with the needle / insertion tool until the strings about a quarter of an inch sticking out of the tire. With these strings that took a fair amount of force. I found a little bit of slight twisting action helped to get the string in more. Of course, you want the string to be tight in there anyway. If it’s too loosey-goosey and it goes in too easy, it might not seal very well. By the way, the little round disc on the insertion tool – my understanding is this is to hold the string in the tire. when you pull the tool out, if the string has a tendency to want to come out, you can use that to hold the string in but I didn’t have to do it on this repair. If I have to do it on any future repairs I’ll post up in the notes. Once your strings are set to the right depth you just pull straight out on the needle and it’ll actually release the string and leave it in the tire. OK next just take your favorite razor blade and trim off any excess string that’s sticking above the surface of the tire. OK next we want to inflate the tire to the proper inflation for your car. My car, I have 35 pounds normally and so I lost – looks like about five or six pounds in the process here. Not too bad. So I’ll go ahead and inflate it back up to 35. OK now with the tire properly inflated, we just want to do a quick leak test. So take some soapy water, put it in a spray bottle and then just spray down the area around the repair really well and look for leaks. A leak will show up as large bubbles if any. OK having seen no leaks, I’ll go ahead and mount the wheel back on the car. OK for those of you who know my videos, always use a torque wrench for putting your wheel back on always tighten in a star pattern never use an impact wrench to tighten the lug nuts only use the impact wrench to take lug nuts off and of course check your owners manual for the proper torque for your wheel lug nuts. OK lastly you just want to monitor the air pressure for the next few days and after you’ve been driving around for a while keep a check on it. This is what it looks like after you’ve ridden the car for a while. It just sort of blends in with the tire and so far, after several months, this repair is holding strong. So that’s it for this video be sure to stay tuned for more car repair and maintenance work but as far as repairing a puncture and your tire goes, that’s how it’s done.

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