Repairing the punctured spare tire

My right rear tire on my jeep was punctured a few months ago by a simple wood screw. I just popped the full size spare on there and kept on trucking, not thinking much of it, but given that I might be doing some fairly long distance drives in the near future (more than 5 miles), I thought I should invest the effort in at least temporarily repairing the spare.


Enter the Temporary Tire Repair Kit!


Temporary Tire repair guide
From The Offroad Tech Archive

If you are in the position of needing to quickly repair a tire that has been puctured by a nail and or screw, you should have a small set of tools in your kit for dealing with this problem, as it can really ruin your day.

1. Needle tool
2. Scraping/cleaning tool
3. Temporary tire repair plugs



How it works

You remove the object that has punctured your tire, taking it out carefully as to prevent further damage. If it's a screw it's real easy, just unscrew it. You then take the scraping and cleaning tool that looks like a screw driver with a pointy head and a round shaft with little file shaped cutting nubs along it's length, and use that to scrape and even out the width of the puncture. Note that if your hole is bigger than this tool to begin with, you will not be able to repair the tire using this method.

Then take a tire repair plug and thread it through the eye of the needle tool, taking care to make sure that exactly half of the several inch long plug is present on either side of the eye. It may take a bit of effort to get it in there, but dont be worried about being to gentle with the plug. It will get through without major injury.

Take the now threaded needle tool and push it into the hole that you have recently cleaned, getting approximately 2/3rd of the length of each side of the plug down into the hole. Do not twist while inserting. Then remove rapidly the needle tool in one single straight out motion. If done properly the plug will remain inside the tire.

Then snip the edges still sticking out of the tire above the tread with a set of scissors or a knife. Scissors will probably work better if they are heavy duty enough. Dont use a good set as the plug will wear down most cutting blades.

Then just inflate tire to proper pressure and monitor it to determine of the plug holds. In all my experiences with this problem the puncture has been inside a valley on the tread, so your mileage may vary if it's on a protruding nub of the tread.



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