Tester beat me to it…
This is all industrial standard, there are no federal laws against it, will vary by state…
Most tire manufactures will void the warranty on a plug (only) tire, the proper way to repair a tire is with a tech patch (patch/plug combo), most big chain tire stores will not plug a tire due to the liability and it is even against some polices to repair a tire that has had an improper repair (plug only, tire sealant)… An independent and or small tire shop can do whatever…
I repaired a tire by pulling out the nail and plugging it with a kit from the auto store. It lasted for years until it didn’t, evidenced by a slow leak. I swapped in the spare, dropped it off at a local tire guy. He patched it on the inside for $10 (20 years ago) and it lasted until the tires failed from age.
The inspection station does not profit in that case, but I surmise that some percent of people would just do the repairs at the inspection station. IN Maryland, you have to go back to the same inspection station to “clear” the fault.
discount tire will fix that with a patch/plug combo for free. I buy my tires there since they do that for free. As long as the nail/hole is 1" from the sidewall, then it’s fixable.
Not to argue but nails in tires are a rare thing and not a reason I would choose a dealer. I’ll pay the $20 for a tire repair. Now one it seems that tires nearing the end of their life is more likely to pick up nails. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I tend to just accelerate the replacement of the tires after a repair. Still nails never come at a convenient time so it’s repair, then replace a few months later.
That may well be true, but my friend picked up a nail in his 1 week old Michelin Cross Climates, recently. Luckily, it was repairable, and he was close to the Costco where he bought them, where they repaired it, gratis.
Now that sounds downright superstitious.
One can pick up a fastener in a tire thirty seconds after pulling out of Discount Tire or the car dealership.
Age or condition of ones tires has nothing to do with chance.
Chris is right, as someone (me)that delt with about 20 flats a day for many years, I have had to warranty out tires that had less then 2/32 of tread loss, when the front tire kicks the object up, it doesn’t matter how much tread is on the tire, it’s going in the tread area, the only advantage a “new” tire has over a “worn out” tire is if the object is short and doesn’t penetrate the tread…
I had a customer that as soon as they turned out of the parking lot pick up a large lag bolt and we had to warranty out the tire, had another one that we put 4 new tires on, and they picked up a nail that was not repairable 3 different times over a few months, they declined road hazard every time, so I sold them 7 tires in just a few months time, I put 4 new tires on my Civic, had to warranty out 3 of them over a few weeks time, yes 7 new tires in just a few weeks…
So again, age and tread depth has nothing to do with picking up an object in a tire… Now we ran 50+ customers a day on average…
Now it is true that the more rain we get the more flats we do, so on a long dry spell, flat repairs fall off a lot, but when the liquid gold falls (rain), flats and tire sells go way up…
I really enjoy conversations like this. Here’s why:
Tires are pretty thin, but they do have some amount of thickness. For a nail or screw to cause a leak it has to be longer than the thickness of the tire. So an object less than 1/8" is never going to cause a leak, but anything longer than 5/8" is definitely going to cause a leak.
That means that a new tire is less likely to get a puncture than a worn out one, because the tire is thinner. - BUT - the difference is relatively small.
So it depends on whether you want to consider that small number as significant - or not.
Boy, do I love how the human brain works!!
Hi Capri:
As you recall we have corresponded via e-mail in the past.
I guess I interpreted the statement about older tires picking up nails in a purely temporal context:
That tires of any mileage have equal chances of encountering a nail.
But yes, it makes sense that higher mileage & wear tires are more likely to suffer damage from said encounter.
If that nail does not leak around the head at all, then it may not go all the way through and all you have to do is pull it out. But first, put some soapy water one it and look for bubbles for at least ten minutes. If there are no bubbles after ten minutes, then I’d just pull it out and check again. Measure the length of the nail, if it is just a tack that is only 1/2" long, it likely did not go through. In 60 years of driving and a lot of tire punctures, that has happened to me once.
Which reminds me. I took my car to a commercial tire place that would patch a tire for $20 on the spot. The tech followed me out to the car, bent down, looked at the invader of my tire tread from several angles, reached in, and plucked out…
The HEAD of a screw! And nothing embedded in the rubber.
I did just the opposite. I had my good tape measure laying on the garage floor when I backed over it. The clip on the end of the tape embedded in my front tire. I pulled it out, no leak, measured the clip, measured the tire tread, and concluded the it was maybe 1/32 from causing a leak. Winter coming and tires almost in the yellow, I just put a new set on. Figured that would be a weak spot that might show up on the road at ten below. I really liked that tape measure too.
I had a car fail in NC because there was a nail still stuck in a tire. But all I needed to do was get it fixed.