Nail in one tire - Replacement Q:

So I just noticed that a tire of mine has a nail in the sidewall.

Q: Can I replace just the one tire? The tires are relatively new, and far from needing replacement.

Yes, if the tread is nearly new. See if any of the current tires are worn more than the others, and put the new one in that spot.

This is funny. I woke up yesterday with a low tire on the right rear. Moved the car incrementally until I could see a nail in the face of the tread. Tread is so low no tire shop would repair it so I bit the bullet and bought a new set today. I figure I might as well start wearing down new tires while the rain was still months away.

As luck would have it, Firestone has a current coupon for ecopia 422's

http://www.firestonecompleteautocare.com/offers/offer-detail/fcac-ecopia50-july10-aug9

This happened to me when our 2013 Leaf was about 6-months old. The nail was in the tread but close to the edge so the tire shop would not patch. I paid $200 for a new tire. Afterwards I remembered that I had a tire repair kit that I had been using for cross-country trips in case of problems in the middle of nowhere.

Looking back, I could have plugged the leak myself and saved the $200, At about 45,000 miles the same thing happened again. This time I did use the plug kit after the tire shop would not repair it. It worked great and no problems for the next 5.000 miles until my wife was rear-ended and the Insurance company totaled the Leaf. The good news in all if this is that i was planning to get all 4 tires replaced within a week or two when the accident happened so at least I saved loosing almost $1,000 on new tires.

I was told that the reason they will not repair tires that have a leak close to the side-wall is that there is the chance that it will start leaking again and they do not want that warranty issue. Well, if you plug it yourself then you do not worry about the warranty, either it works and no problems, or it does not and you do have to change the tire. in my case it did work and I think it would have worked 3 years earlier if I had thought to do it then.

You can often pickup a single tire on Craigslist or similar, in your local area, since single tires are hard to get rid of. You might even get lucky and find a match (same make/model) for the one with the punctured sidewall. Depending on where you live, you might get lucky and find a lightly used tire from a used tire store.

I have an alert setup for keywords "Ecopia 422 plus" on Craigslist, one of these days a full set is going to become available, I can feel it

Ebay tire dealers will also sell single tires occasionally, at a big discount (if they have an odd number).

Graffi said:

This happened to me when our 2013 Leaf was about 6-months old. The nail was in the tread but close to the edge so the tire shop would not patch. I paid $200 for a new tire. Afterwards I remembered that I had a tire repair kit that I had been using for cross-country trips in case of problems in the middle of nowhere.

Looking back, I could have plugged the leak myself and saved the $200, At about 45,000 miles the same thing happened again. This time I did use the plug kit after the tire shop would not repair it. It worked great and no problems for the next 5.000 miles until my wife was rear-ended and the Insurance company totaled the Leaf. The good news in all if this is that i was planning to get all 4 tires replaced within a week or two when the accident happened so at least I saved loosing almost $1,000 on new tires.

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Did you buy this tire from the dealer? I paid slightly over $500 for 4 brand new Ecopias on my Leaf including installation and disposal fees.

I was told that the reason they will not repair tires that have a leak close to the side-wall is that there is the chance that it will start leaking again and they do not want that warranty issue. Well, if you plug it yourself then you do not worry about the warranty, either it works and no problems, or it does not and you do have to change the tire. in my case it did work and I think it would have worked 3 years earlier if I had thought to do it then.

Click to expand...

Tire shops don't consider it a safe repair and don't want the associated liability; same reason why most will not put new tires up front if you only buy a pair.