How To Fix This - Patch A Tire

Hey guys, it's Matt with the YouTube channel Bleepin' Jeep. In the last video, I showed you the tools that you need to repair your tire out on the trail. In this video, I wanna show you how to do it. We're gonna repair a large gash in this tire. Stay tuned. So technically, you're not supposed to repair anything outside of this little piece right here in the center. If there's a hole outside that, you're not supposed to repair it, but that's because of liability issues only. I wanna make clear that in this video, we're just talking about off-road use only. The patch technique is gonna be the same, but we're not supposed to repair outside of here, but we wanna get off the trail. So where should we put a hole in this thing? So a lot of people say you can't repair the sidewall, but I'm gonna disagree. Again, emergency use only, you can. So what do you think about right here? Now this tire's got air in it. Got my safety squints on. Let's put a hole right there. You ready? Need a picture of that for the thumbnail. Now Paula Deen just made a mess of this tire. Now the first step is gonna be to take it off and dismount it. So let's do that. Now the easiest way to dismount a tire is to use your vehicle's weight and a high-lift jack. I carry a floor jack out on the trail, but usually somebody will have a high-lift jack. This tire hasn't been off in 10 years, so it's gonna be a little more difficult, but we'll just rotate it, do it again here. Okay, one side up, one side down, one side to go. Now this is the hardest part. You'll want some kind of lube. I'm gonna use some soap, but you can use whatever you've got out on the trail to do this. WD-40 or Windex even, whatever you want. Make sure to get that down in there, and then you're gonna need three, some kind of pry bars, whether it's tire spoons or just very large screwdrivers. Okay, so you're gonna start with one, try to get it in there, pull it over like that, and you'll move over here, do the same thing. Get the soap down there where I need it. There you go. Now you take the middle one and you continue. At this point, if you really wanted to, you could probably do your repair like this, but it's gonna be easier if you get the entire wheel out, and it'll only take you a couple more minutes, so let's do that. All right, now this part will be difficult unless you have a buddy or a longer tool, so I've got out my breaker bar, and what you're gonna do is put it under here and then pry back on it, and hold the tire down right here. There you go. Okay, now let's look inside the tire and we'll find that hole. Oh, there it is. So most likely you'll have a stick or something in there. You'll wanna go ahead and remove that, and then you'll wanna take your tire tool and just remove any debris that might be in there. Just clean it up with this. All right, so we've got about a one and a half inch gash right here. So it's kinda hard to see it at this point, so if you can, go ahead and mark it with a cross here so you'll be able to find it later on. So we'll just do that. I'd also like to clean it, if possible, with a chemical. I've got some starting fluid. Just whatever you have out on the trail, and we're gonna spray that whole area where the patch is gonna go. Don't light a cigarette. This is just gonna make the glue stick a little better later on. Now, we're gonna have to put a pretty big patch on here, so I wanna go ahead and clean a fairly large area here. Now, if you'll notice, the tire has all these lines and little dots in it. We need to smooth that out. So in the last video, I showed you this tool. What we're gonna do is use it to grind all this into a flat spot. When I say flat, I mean it two ways. One, we're gonna get rid of these bumps, and also the sheen. You want it to be not glossy. So next, we're gonna take our brush and just clean up all that extra rubber pieces that are still stuck on there. And I probably went a little too far right there. You can see I got in too deep on the tire. So try not to do that, but there's no going back now, so we're just gonna deal here. Next up, I wanna take my rubber cement. Now, in the description box below, I'm gonna leave you with links to everything that you need to do this, so don't worry about that now. I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna use this tool, the cleaner tool, and I'm gonna put that in the gap. So I wanna get that down in there. Get some of that rubber cement in the hole. Then I'll take the brush and just apply the rubber cement to this whole area. Now, the way rubber cement works, it has to be dry to stick. So you're just gonna put a light coat of this on and let it dry for at least two minutes or so. Make sure you get the whole thing, though. While we're waiting for that to dry, let's look at the patches here. You've got all kinds of different types. You've got for bias ply. You've got for radial. You've got round ones, rectangular ones, and diaper-shaped ones. Even though that gash is pretty small, I wanna use a large patch because it's on the sidewall and it's right in a corner, too. So let's use this octagonal one. That glue should be dry now. It should be tacky to the touch, it is. So we're gonna take this patch and we're gonna peel off the backside, trying not to touch the stick-em area. Okay, it's got directions. It says the bead needs to be facing those arrows. So we're gonna stick it right there. Now we're gonna use this roller tool and roll out any of the air. We're gonna start in the middle. Push hard and roll it out to the edge. Then do it in the middle again, out to the other edge. Then we're gonna go the other way. Starting in the middle, all the way out to the edge. Middle, all the way out to the edge. Do that a couple times and then your patch will be pretty much complete. Now if you're a pro tire repair shop, they're gonna have some rubber stuff that goes around the edge here to kinda seal everything up. Of course, you're not gonna have that on a trail. So what I'm gonna do is just put a little bit more of this rubber cement around the edge. You don't have to, but what's it gonna hurt, right? And the last thing I wanna do is just to remove all of this debris that's down in here so it doesn't get stuck in your valve core. Okay, that's the easy part. Now for the hard part again. Let's lube the tire up again, right along that lip. Oh, that's slippery. All right, let's start at the valve core here. Now you wanna make sure wherever that patch was that we don't stress it too much. So I think it's right there. Let's put it on the back side or maybe 90 degrees. How about that? Oh, I'm too hot and sweaty. That's hard to do by yourself. We're almost there. We just need to fill it up. So make sure it's seated here. Just wanna kind of kick it. Make sure the back side looks good, seated. There we go. Moment of truth. All right, there it is, folks. We've got 21.4 pounds in this tire. Now the cut is right here. Let's see if it's leaking. All you wanna do is spray some kind of soapy water or something on there and see if you see any bubbles. Not a single bubble, so that's awesome. Now remember, if you're running low tire pressure when you're wheeling and you have something like this and you go to repair it, you probably don't wanna run that low tire pressure again on this tire because if it flexes too much, it's gonna put too much stress on there, especially being on the sidewall. If you can imagine only running five pounds in here now, it's gonna flex when you go over a rock and it's gonna try to blow that out. So I would recommend you going back up to 20 or 30 pounds after you do your patch. That way the tire is not flexing that much. So the procedure to do a patch is the same no matter where you're doing it, but if you do a patch anywhere out here in this area, it's not gonna be street legal. You probably don't wanna be driving it on the street if you're patching this area. Now a tire shop also is only gonna be able to do a tire patch right through this center section. They're not gonna repair anything outside of that. But to be able to put a patch on the outside of the sidewall would be a lifesaver if like me, you don't carry a spare. All right guys, thanks for watching. I really do appreciate it. If you enjoyed the video, hit the thumbs up and subscribe. If you really enjoyed the video, check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash bleepinjeep because there we offer our videos in advance. So sometimes we upload the videos a week, maybe two weeks in advance. Those Patreon viewers get to see those before anyone else. So check it out, bleepinjeep, patreon.com slash bleepinjeep. All right, we'll see you next time. Thanks a lot. Ow!