Repair ATV Tire With a Bolt?

[bspeedy]

Easy fix with 'silly string'. Kit is about 5 bucks from anywhere. Should last the life of the tire. The fancy plug shown will work, maybe better, but requires dismounting the tire. By the way, your tire shop is crooked or ignorant or both. That is an easy, cheap fix. They are trying to sell you a new tire. One of the employees will use your 'junk' tire on their atv at your expense.

 

[Argonne]

I went ahead and did it with a 1/4-20 bolt, a pair of 1" washers, and a nyloc nut. I have one of those Harbor Freight tire machines, so the dismount/remount wasn't too painful.

I trimmed a tread knob to clear the outside washer so I could keep the washer flat, and I did drill the tear out to 1/4 inch to eliminate any stress caused by the bolt contacting the rubber. I also trapped a fairly flexible variant of RTV between the washers and let if cure for 24 hours before putting the tire back on the rim.

The tire held air fine, but I topped it off with 24oz of Slime, and then rode for about 7 miles at up to 25mph. On return, the bolt is intact and showing no signs of movement or ground contact (the deep tread apparently preventing that), and there is no evidence of Slime leakage around the bolt. I also don't see any evidence of rubber fatigue around the washer, but it's early for that anyway.

I detected no balance artifact at the speeds I traveled. This week I'll make an excursion up to 50mph and see if I get any then. I really don't think I will.

A new tire is on the list of things to buy, but I'm pretty happy with how this worked out for now and will put it off for awhile. If anything bad happens, I'll post it on here, but no news is good news.

Thanks for all of the input. I seriously considered the plug/patch, but that would have been money down the drain if it didn't work, and one nice thing about the bolt is that I can easily inspect it often....Nice conversation piece too :laughing:.

 

[dieselcrawler]

I bet you could wear those tires out with no issues from your 'patch'.

Good to know you got it done.

 

[Ford850]

"Hey, buddy, did you know you have a bolt stuck in your tire? You might want to get that looked at".

 

[pmsmechanic]

I want to see how this goes. I would have done the plug and slime thing myself but this is worth a shot too.

What some people forget is that a patch unbalances a tire also. Maybe not as much but if you double patch as suggested then it can probably weigh cclose to a .25" bolt and washers.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

I wonder if the tire held up or not

 

[Argonne]

So far so good. Probably only 20 miles on it so far but looks and performs fine.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

Cool good deal

 

[Argonne]

I wonder if the tire held up or not

I'm calling this a viable permenant fix for my Swamp Lite and the way I use this machine. I have over 100 miles on this tire now, much of it on gravel at ~30mph, and nothing is happening at the repair site. The RTV that squished out around the washer on the outside of the tire isn't even wearing off. The tire holds air flawlessly, and there is no balance artifact at any speed.

If I keep this tire till it gets bald, I suppose things could change, but I don't see me having a 4-wheeler with bald tires anyway...that would be pretty useless.

Farm use, low speed, in my opinion, this poses minimal threat of failure.

 

[ovrszd]

I'm calling this a viable permenant fix for my Swamp Lite and the way I use this machine. I have over 100 miles on this tire now, much of it on gravel at ~30mph, and nothing is happening at the repair site. The RTV that squished out around the washer on the outside of the tire isn't even wearing off. The tire holds air flawlessly, and there is no balance artifact at any speed.

If I keep this tire till it gets bald, I suppose things could change, but I don't see me having a 4-wheeler with bald tires anyway...that would be pretty useless.

Farm use, low speed, in my opinion, this poses minimal threat of failure.

I agree. Excellent repair!!!