Mike Melton shows why external tire plugs fail and walks through the right way: reaming steel belts, cleaning and buffing the interior, applying vulcanizing cement, inserting the patch, and stitching it. Done correctly, the patch lasts as long as the tire.
A lot of tire shops are doing tire repairs the wrong way. So a lot of times they just take and stick a plug in the tire. That's not the right way to do it. Now the right way to do it is do it from the inside like we are here. We're going to take that reamer and go in and out. It's going to get any steel belts out of the way. Now you're going to take your rubber cleaner, spray it on there. Now we're going to scrape it. Now when you scrape it, it gets all that oil and any kind of debris off of that tire. Now we're going to take our buffer wheel, put it on there like that. Now what I like to do is make a square where that patch is going to go. Now we're going to go from one side to the other. So now after you get all that done, you're going to take a vacuum. So we vacuum all the debris out of the way. Now we're going to spray it. After we clean it off. Now we're going to scrape it again. Now we're going to take our vulcanizing cement. We're going to place it on there. Now a lot of people use big globs. Take and get that brush real clean. You don't need a lot of glue. Alright, now that we got it dried to a haze, what you want to do is take the protective covering off of the patch. Make sure you do not touch the patch area because any kind of oils on your skin will cause that not to adhere like it should to to the tire. Now you see, I'm keeping my hand on it. You're going to want to take it. Go ahead and put that in the hole like that right there. Now you can peel the other half off. Now we take our pliers. Now we're going to pull that down to the tire. See a little dimple. Now we're going to take our stitcher and we're going to go from one side, bring it on down and then we're going to go to the other side. After we got it all stitched down, we're going to take and take this plastic covering off like that right there. Now we're going to go back again just to make sure it's all down because you do not want that patch coming off. Now we take a security coat and we're going to put that around that patch right there. When you do it like this, that patch will last the lifetime of this tire.
