Tyres For Sale

In my early days working in Tyre shops tubeless tyres were an amazing thing! One fantastic benefit from my point of view at the time was if one had a puncture I could just “plug it” with a fancy little rubber strip and a bunch of glue. Buff it off and in 5 minutes puncture was fixed, 15 dollars thank you very much.

In fact this picture shows exactly the type of string plug used.

Roll forward a couple of years though and doubts started to surface around the safety of using such a way to fix a tyre. For one thing because the tyre was not even removed from the rim, damage could have occurred internally to the tyre which would not be known about. This damage could cause the tyre to prematurely fail, or be unsafe at high speeds when temperatures were higher than normal. In short the safety of the tyre was now in an unknown state.

Is it legal to plug a tyre? Well it’s hard to find specific text to state that however when checking on the VTNZ website they had the following to say.

Many garages sell ‘string repair’ kits or sealants as a quick-fix solution for tyre punctures. Use these as temporary measures only, to get home or to a repair service. Drive slowly and for a short distance

Remember your safety is worth a lot more than saving a few bucks, so get your tyres fixed properly by an approved repairer.