Wife’s car had a flat tyre yesterday. It was cold, and I was lazy, and we don’t have HomeStart, so I decided to do the poorman’s fix and use Holts TyreWeld instead of changing the tyre (yes, the car has a full-size spare).
The instructions on the can say that the bottle need to be agitated vigorously, which I can manage, and if the weather is cold it should be warmed.... now form pseudo-scientific experiments carried out in my youth I know that warming an aerosol can with a cigarette lighter is not a good idea... so the other option was to tuck the cold metal can under my shirt. Brrrr....
OK, got that sorted, connected the tube to the tyre and opened the valve at the top of the can... lots of foamy goo seem to rush from the can into the wheel for a few seconds, then nothing... the instructions say to wait until the entire contents of the can has been transferred to the wheel, but problem was the can was still well over half full... so I waited for 10 minutes, then gave up and disconnected the tube.
The whole process made no impression on the tyre, which remained just as uninflated as it was when I started the process. So at this stage I took out the footpump and inflated the tyre to around 15psi, just enough to drive slowly to the petrol station (not forgetting to take a 50p coin with me, nothing is free in London...). Footpumping the tyre took around half an hour.... so by this time I was one hour from when I started. Changing the wheel would have been quicker.
Also, the instructions say that you need to drive immediately 6 to 12 miles to ensure even distribution of the stuff inside the tyre... yeah, sure in central London... with roadworks, traffic lights, and general congestion.... no way.
At the local Tesco garage, I tried inflating the tyre further, but the problem was that the valve was full of the sticky gooey stuff, and this seems to confuse the air compressor. I tried it inflate it to 40psi, but the reading kept changing between 5psi and 25psi and the pump stopped. I think it was not able to sense the tyre pressure correctly. So eventually I gave up and drove away, at this point I had around 20psi in the tyre.
Took the car to the ATS branch, they fixed the hole which was done by a screw (probably from the nearby Gordon Ramsey pub that has been undergoing renovation). Cost of fixing the tyre was around a tenner, plus a fiver for wheel balancing (each), and a new valve and VAT, total £25. By the way, the guy at ATS said that the TyreWeld stuff can ruin the tyre, and that I was lucky it did not cause any damage...
My question is – has anyone ever tried using the likes of TyreWeld and was successful? Or is it just me?
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Topic: Holts TyreWeld? (Read 2471 times)