Woke up this morning and my tire pressure light was on. Went out to check and I think I found the culprit, a nail in my passenger rear tire.

Is the nail too close to the sidewall to be patchable?

 

I would say yes, but the big tire shops may try to deny you and say you need a new tire.

 

I've ran plugs that close to the sidewall before and have seen shops patch even closer to the sidewall as well...at your risk, really

 

Thanks for the responses guys! Just found out discount tires will patch tires for free so I'm going to go in and see if they'll do this

 

looks like it's worth a shot at patching to me because it doesn't look like it's damaging the sidewall material itself / structurally.

 

That looks to me like it's just far enough away from the sidewall to be patchable. Make sure, though, if they take the tire off the rim to patch it from the inside that they remount it and balance it correctly. I did a whole thread on just the subject of proper mount/balance recently. Make sure, also, that the shop knows how to properly replace the tire-pressure sensor.....that can be difficult, and not al shops know how to do that. If they don't have to take the tire off the rim, of course, that won't be much of an issue.

 

Might wanna do patch and plug.

 

Update: I went to Discount tires to see if they could patch it, and they said the nail puncture occurred at the curvature region and they would not be able to patch it.

However, they were willing to sell me a used, but newer identical spec tire to my current hankook v12 tire. Price out of the door, including mounting/balancing came out to be $70.

I ended up buying the tire, but not sure if I got tricked haha. Guess it's too late for me to change my mind now, but I'm just curious to see if they were lying when they said the tire was unpatchable:

This is what the inside of the tire looked like, you can see the bump where the nail was removed:

 

If you got taken, it wasn't by much....so I wouldn't be too concerned. That puncture was right on the borderline (or very close to it) of what was probably questionable or not for safety in a patch. Getting a new tire certainly didn't hurt....as long as it is not an AWD vehicle and you've got one brand new tire on it and three worn ones, which could affect the life of the center differential.

Also, did they mount/balance it properly and install the tire pressure sensor correctly? If so, you won't have any shimmies/vibrations in the steering wheel or car structure, and the warning light for the tire-sensor will come on momentarily (with the other warning lights) when the ignition is first turned on and then go off in a couple of seconds. If not...time for a trip back to the shop.

 

they wont patch it if it gets close to the sidewall, because the patch will just loosen over time and it becomes a huge safety hazard when it does

 

sounds like discount tire treated you right.

 

A good deal considering you've eliminated a tire blow-out risk. I would have done the same.

 

Seems the one who got taken was the prior owner of the tire, who paid disposal fees for the tire to sit around the shop to be re-sold to someone else...

 

I was the go-to guy for difficult or unusual tire repairs before I recently retired. We would not normally have repaired this tire. There are RMA (Rubber Manufacturers Association) guidelines for acceptable repairs and this tire is well outside those guidelines. Repairs outside those guidelines leaves the dealer exposed to too much potential liability.

I would on occasion do a repair like this anyway. It is a difficult repair because of that very curved area you have to buff to the correct smoothness. Done correctly, a repair will work fine. In 35 years, I knew only a very few people I would trust to do this correctly.

The scary part of even a good repair on or too close to the sidewall is if that tire is ever run very low or flat again, the repair can be heated and abraded to the point of failure. Once any tire has been run soft or flat long enough, the liner can become soft and tacky making any more repairs impossible.

 

Yeah that was patchable oh well tho.