Sliced the sidewall of one of my front tires after hitting a curb. None of the wiring or metal is exposed. Can this be safely repaired or do I need four new tires? My car is a leased 2015 Audi A3. Less than 7000 miles. Don’t live in an area with snow or ice if that matters.
Thanks
Pics: http://imgur.com/a/v4HAl
Sidewall damage cannot be repaired, and because it ultimately weakens the tire and makes it very prone to blow-out, you do need to replace it.
However, unless your car has AWD, there should be no need to replace all 4.
With a FWD (or, for that matter, a RWD) vehicle with only 7k miles on the odometer, you should only need to replace one tire, but it needs to be the exact same tire brand, model, size, and speed rating as the old tire.
The car is AWD… So does that mean all 4 tires?
I second VDCdriver.
“The car is AWD… So does that mean all 4 tires?”
It all depends on the amount of tread wear on the “old” tires, as well as the amount of tolerance that Audi’s AWD system can withstand when it comes to mis-matched tires.
Your Owner’s Manual should have some verbiage on this topic in terms of the maximum amount of tread wear difference that the AWD system can tolerate, but if you can’t find it in the manual, a phone call to customer service at Audi of America’s corporate level should yield the correct info.
A used tire or pair of used tires might solve this problem quite well.
“A used tire or pair of used tires might solve this problem quite well.”
On a brand-new 2015 luxury vehicle?
Perhaps if the OP could locate the exact same brand/model/size/speed rating tire(s) this might work, but–then again–this is potentially a good way to incur a penalty when turning in this leased vehicle.
Edited to add:
No matter what approach the OP takes to tire replacement, I want to point out that a “whack” strong enough to take that chunk out of the tire’s sidewall was likely also strong enough to put the front end out of alignment. I strongly urge the OP to have the wheel alignment checked when installing the new tire(s) because if bad alignment isn’t corrected, then the new tire(s) won’t last very long.
The tire is damaged beyond repair and in my opinion it is unsafe to be driven at expressway speeds. <45 would be my suggestion.
I would try to find a tire shop that could ‘shave’ a new tire to match the other 3.
@texases what kind of place can do that? Tire rack? Tires plus? Walmart? Pep boys? I’m in broward county FL.
You can google ‘tire shaving yourzipcode’, see if some tire specialists near you do it. I doubt mass marketers do it, it’s used mostly for autocrossers to reduce tread depth.
Tire rack offers tire shaving for the competition tires it sells but they would really need to measure an existing tire. Ask your Audi dealer who they use or if they have a tire shaving machine. High end dealers usually have a relationship with high end tire stores that have such tools as tire “truing” or shaving machines and tire force and runout measurement machines. Or call around to your local tire dealers. If they don’t know what you are talking about hangup and call another store.
You need a Continental ProContact TX tire like the one in the link.
Just found out my Audi dealership has a tire center. I’ll probably bring it in tomorrow. Thanks for the help everyone.