**DISCLAIMER** The info in this thread is a suggestion for a temporaily fix of your on road or off road tire and BY NO MEANS SHOULD BE USED AS A PERMANANT FIX OR REPAIR!! Only someone who has been trained or has extensive knowledge in tire repair should perform said duties the info in this thread is to be used at the users own risk and neither the webpage nor it's affliates accept's any responsiblity for damage or injury caused by misinterpretation of the info contained in this page!!!! Failure to understand all proceedures could result in damage to property severe injury or death!!
Even the toughest tires aren't bulletproof. And if you run them hard enough for long enough - eventually you're going to have to deal with repairing one. Punctures in the tread are easy to fix - just plug them from the outside and add a nice big patch on the inside. Don't use the dinky little plugs and patches you get at auto parts stores - they're only meant for radial tires on a car. Instead, head to the local 18-wheeler or tractor supply house and get a heavy duty plug and patch kit intended for big trucks, off-road equipment, or tractors.
Sidewall damage is another thing altogether. It's what everybody dreads - and for good reason - it can be very difficult to repair. You can't simply plug or patch a sidewall gash - the flexing of the sidewall and the loads imposed on it will spit out a plug in short order. There is some hope however. The trick to a decent sidewall repair is something called a "section repair" that comes from the heavy truck and equipment tire world.
A ‘section repair’ is the term for a professional, industrial repair to a damaged tire. It is normally performed only on large heavy equipment type tires that cost many thousands of dollars. The damaged area is “sectioned” or cut out and the area enlarged – similar to the way you would cut out rusted sheet-metal. A new piece of rubber, or combination of rubber and body-ply is then vulcanized over the damaged area.
Technically, vulcanizing is the process of hardening rubber by combining it with either sulphur, selenium, or tellurium and applying heat. The end result is rubber with a useful level of hardness, but a sufficient amount of elasticity, or flexibility. The process was discovered accidentally by U.S. inventor Charles Goodyear in 1839 and patented in 1844. He named the process "vulcanizing" after Vulcan, the Roman God of fire.
Vulcanizing in the context of tire repair refers to a process where rubber is, essentially, 'welded' by the carefully controlled application of heat, to repair punctures or damage to the tire; using a machine called a vulcanizer.
There are also several types of “cold-cure”, “no-heat”, or "cold fusion" vulcanizing processes that can be used by either the professional or do-it-yourselfer. Generally, you grind out the damaged area, apply a large patch-like repair section (often called a “boot”) inside the tire and then apply some sort of cold vulcanizing chemical. After a prescribed amount of time (often up to 72 hours – depending on the manufacturer) the repair is chemically cured.
In most cases, radial tires are much less readily repaired using these methods, especially if the damage is to the sidewall, because of the risk of a blowout known as a “zipper”. Recall that all the chords in all the plies in a radial lie in the same direction. This means that a split or gash in the sidewall of a radial can quickly spread – like cutting a board with an axe along the grain, leading to sudden and explosive failure.
In fact, most tire manufacturers, along with the Rubber Manufacturers Association state that it is unsafe to repair (especially in a radial) a tire injury that is outside of the steel belts, or located on any part of the sidewall.
However, for a trail-only, off-road, bias ply tire a professional section repair can save the tireBY
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