My boon companion, the one who must be obeyed, drives about 4,000 miles a year and seems to get about 2 punctures in that time. I took two to the menders this morning, one a slow puncture caused by a big nail, the other very slow one owing to a small nail.
She's always going to the tip. Maybe that's it?
£25 cash for the two. Inflation's taking hold - the last one was £10.
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Kwik Fit used to do it free. Well, our local one did anyway. Funny things punctures, a bit like windscreen dings, you can go years without one and then get a few in quick succession.
Tip does sound like a potential culprit though.
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Not any more they don't - Kwikfit on the A4 east of Reading charged £22.50 per puncture the other day: like Mrs Manatee (Personatee?) I had two at once.
But at least they mended them. All too often you are told that the nail is too near the edge of the tyre, which in many cases is true but I'm sure there are some tyre fitters who see an opportunity to sell a new tyre when the nail is near enough to the centre to be mended.
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Mrs RP got a screw in thenback tyre of the Kwacker. Some Fairy Liquid confirmed the worst. Down to e local bike shop, they removed the wheel ( no centre stand for DIY) repaired and re-fitted for 27 notes - bargain really given the amount of work involved.
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>> Kwikfit on the A4 east of Reading charged £22.50
>> per puncture the other day
I feel better hearing that! Sorry. The last one I took to a chain was about £17.50, but that was 10 years ago. I usually take them to an independent now, if you have cash in your hand when you go in it's a fiver cheaper. I did use his jack to take the second one off while he was doing the first, then put the first back on while he did the second to speed things up. Try that at Kwik-Fit.
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>> >> Kwikfit on the A4 east of Reading charged £22.50
>> >> per puncture the other day
>>
>> I feel better hearing that! Sorry. The last one I took to a chain was
>> about £17.50, but that was 10 years ago. I usually take them to an independent
>> now, if you have cash in your hand when you go in it's a fiver
>> cheaper. I did use his jack to take the second one off while he was
>> doing the first, then put the first back on while he did the second to
>> speed things up. Try that at Kwik-Fit.
>>
I have the kit. Glue, big F-off Awl, and I've had instruction from the blokes who do it.
Again, if it is on the shoulder, best to get it looked at by the pros - otherwise, pliers to get it out, thread and apply glue to the awl, spray of Zippo fluid, re-inflate, and bob's your uncle.
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A puncture cost me a tenner at a branch of a small chain a couple of years ago.
One of the benefits of living in the North East is that some goods, and in partcular, services, are cheaper than elsewhere.
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£22.50 to fix a puncture? At that rate they should stop retailing tyres altogether!
Stick to your local indie, it'll be a tenner or less and you know where to go back to when you need tyres again.
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Nails, screws and other debris tends to end up close to the kerb. I try to avoid squeezing through gaps that put me there.
Picked up a large screw one morning on the way to work just on the edge of the tread. Cost me £130 ish for a new Primacy. Someone mentioned that I more than likely picked it up from near a level crossing which was the route away from a caravan factory. Apparently during construction screws are dropped which land up on the chassis and then get shaken off at the crossing. Made sense to me.
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...Apparently during construction screws are dropped...
There must be hundreds of self-tappers and clout nails holding my static together.
Quite a few are bound to end up lying loose somewhere.
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I would normally have gone to an independent - Thames View Tyres of Henley are excellent - but one tyre was getting soft and I didn't fancy a wheel change en route!
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Our Honda Jazz (without a spare) came with a note from the dealer saying they'd do puncture repairs free. Being ever cynical I assume this is so they can generally tell you the tyre can't be repaired (especially if the emergency sealant has been used) and sell you a new tyre.
However they did repair one of ours which had a self-tapper right through the middle of the tread. It caused me to put the winter tyres on early but at least that meant a repair could be done. However looking at it today I'm not so sure I can trust it on the car - it looks very rough to me. Unfortunately Jazz has a fairly rare tyre size so they're expensive tyres for what it is (around £100 each) and the repaired one is probably about the best of the four.
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>>I'm not so sure I can trust it on the car - it looks very rough to me
It will have a mushroom patch on the inside, I think it's illegal just to plug tyres now. You can probably see the plug part of the patch flush with the raised part of the tread or even protruding slightly - if that's all you mean by rough then it looks exactly like the two I had done yesterday.
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A bit of the plug sticking out? It'll be gone in a couple of miles and you won't be able to find the place easily. I've had quite a few such repairs and they have all worked.
The dealer wouldn't repair the tyre if it had serious carcase damage. Tyres are very tough things unless their steel or plastic armatures are seriously tattered.
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Thanks - ideally I'd like to get the summer out of the current set. I can put the winter's back on if needed and then get a new summer set at leisure.
Last edited by: Bill Payer on Sun 13 May 12 at 16:50
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There's a lane we can use to get to the main road which is usually in a shocking condition. The council keep patching it up but it's soon wrecked again.
Mainly because, in my opinion anyway, it is very narrow but the people who live on it, perhaps understandably park on it leaving the narrowest of gaps to get through. As soon as two vehicles meet head on they can be faced with one of them having to perform a quarter mile of twisty and narrow reversing or one of them driving up on to the kerb and squeezing by. Much of the traffic is heavy farm stuff and even HGVs who may not know the the longer but alternative route. Compound all that with a primary school half way along its length with the usual random abandonment of vehicles at peak times because walking seems no longer to be an option.
Resultantly, it's forever potholed and with damaged kerbs. I rarely use it and prefer to take a half mile longer detour along more adequate roads.
However, yesterday, early on, I was driving my wife's Qashqai and for no reason at all I decided to take the short way down the lane. We bounced and bumped a bit but her car has softish suspension and 16" wheels shod with 65 section tyres and it coped well enough.
Later then I was in my Merc which has "sports" suspension, a low slung front spoiler thing, 18" wheels and 35 section tyres. Some momentary inattention caused me to try the same route. Big mistake ! It crunched, banged and crashed its way down there and at £200 + per tyre I winced at every thump as its "AMG" wheels sank into the sharp sided potholes.
From what I can see, no visible damage was done on this occasion but it served to remind me of the limitations of such a combination.
Won't be going that way again any time soon !
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Mon 14 May 12 at 18:59
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Punctures - how do they do it? - Runfer D'Hills
