Well over the weekend I ran over a nail and I plugged the hole. The tire still leaked so I took it over to this place that is really good with tires for them to have a look (the place is like out of someone's garage, but man do they know their stuff).

So he replugs it with a bigger plug, but it still leaked. He then took the tire off so that we could see where the other hole was. While he did this I was wondering what makes a runflat not go flat. Of course I thought there was some goo in there or some special tube - something, but to my amazement there was nothing different about the inside of this tire so, like the newbie that I am, I asked the wheel guy. He said it has nothing in it just really strong sidewalls. So I tried pushing on the sidewall of my tire and then compared it to a non-runflat, wow what a big difference.

so any other newbie that wants to know what is in your tire well here is the answer - nothing...

BTW - there was another small hole right next to the whole where the nail went in. He cleaned up the inside, applied a patch, told me why I needed to have valve stem caps (something else I did not realize), paid him (no corvette tax), and on the way home I went....

 

Cool WW, that's how everyone learns....by asking Now someone else won't have to. Nice job. These posts are always welcome because we all have things (knowledge) that we take for granted and just assume everyone knows it.

Paul

 

That's what makes them so LOUD!

 

 

I will third that-way to loud

 

i will 4th that. plus the stiff sidewall/hard composition makes the handling worse than non runflats.

 

Thanks, good story !

 

Name & location of this tire place would be appreciated.

Jerry

 

Good post and thanks for sharing the info. Nice when you can find a quality shop to work on your car.

 

The concept behind the EMT's is that the tire can be driven on with no air in it. The sidewall is not only very stiff, but very thick. The tire will stay on the wheel and the bead will stay seated without air.

 

the place is located in Red Bank, NJ on route 35 it is called Stafford Tire. They have been since 1975 (I found this out yesterday talking to the owner of the company who use to sleep in the rafters of the building when he first opened it). It is a very small place and I had my doubts about using them, but I found them to be very customer friendly (letting me stand right in the garage as they worked on the tire) and very knowledgable about tires. They used the standard equipment, but put a rubber guard on my tire before breaking the bead so that they did not ruin the rim.

They also stated that if I could get a better price on the internet then they could get or a tire that they were not able to get for some reason that they were more than willing to mount the tires for me so you are not locked into their brands or their costs.

As a side story my friend stopped there because one of his front tires on his Lexus was bent from hitting something. The guy looked at it and asked what kind of spare he had and my friend did not know. So they pulled all the crap out of his trunk and found a full size spare. He looked at it, said it was in good shape, replaced the bad one, threw that back in the trunck, and did not charge my friend. My friend though did give him a tip at the end for the time he spent....