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| Tire Repairs |
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Here, at Stokes Tire pros, we repair approximately 15-20 tires' every day, six days a week
We thought you might want to learn a little about the process and what you get for your money in our store.
These days, at least half of the vehicles we service, are fitted with TPMS, (Tire pressure monitoring systems) a state of the art system that monitors tire pressure while you are driving.
The TPMS system will be on all cars by 2009. It informs you, the driver, of a loss of air pressure in one of your tires, by illuminating a light on your dash. However, most systems, do not tell you which tire is losing air. To determine this, we rack your vehicle and raise it to allow us to visual inspect for nails, screws or other objects. We get an up close view of your tires this way. If we don't see anything obvious, we then check all the tires for air pressures (usually indicated on the door pillar) for the correct factory recommended air pressures. "Very important" Tires not check by the customer for more than six months will all be low enough to trigger the TPMS sensors without running over anything at all. We may find this to be the problem, all tires equally low and all at about the same low pressure. Then the tires will be all refilled with air and we will send you out there again with the light reset.
Note some cars require driving for as much as 15 miles or so for the TPMS to reset automatically, others we reset in the shop. If one tire is low or much lower than the others it will be dunked in a water tank, where we watch for air bubbles under water. If spotted, the tire will be marked with a yellow chalk so we can easily re locate the hole later. The tire is also marked where wheel weights are, and the position of the valve stem, so we can put it back as close as possible before this happened for balance reasons. The tire is now removed from the wheel and further inspected again looking for other damages that would make your tire not safe even if the hole was repaired correctly. Then a new chalk mark is made on the inside to pin point the small hole. We then with a special abrasive grinder remove the top layer or wax like skin from the inter liner, then we will apply special glue for tire repairs, and wait till it dries and roll on a business size radial rubber patch made for tires. Then reinstall the tire, replace weights where they were, reset the air pressure retest with soapy water and then reinstall on the vehicle, and set the air pressure on the other three tires. We do all of this for about twenty dollars. On run flat tires or larger tires on larger diameter wheels we charge twenty five to thirty five dollars. A very under rated service, which requires about twenty-five to thirty-minutes. Smoking deal!
Note: a wheel balance check is a good idea! May not have been right from the start.
Tires cannot always be repaired. Non reparable tires are tires that:
- Tires that have been run under inflated for too long causing sidewall damage.
- Nail or screw to close to the edge near sidewall. Use a thumb width as a rule.
- Tires with too many holes.
- Tires that are too worn to be safe on the road.
- Tires with sidewall damage.
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