What's my tire size?

We repair punctures in the tread area with a plug and a patch. Damage to the sidewall or the shoulder cannot be repaired safely, and neither can a tire driven flat long enough to chew up the inner liner. When a tire is finished, we bring a new or inspected used one and fit it on site.

A combination of both is the right repair. We take the tire off the rim, inspect it from the inside, seal the hole with a plug and cover it with a patch so air cannot travel along the puncture. A plug pushed in from the outside without removing the tire is a temporary fix.

Air pressure falls about 1 PSI for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit the temperature drops. A cold front that takes Austin from 70 to 40 overnight leaves a tire three PSI low and trips the light on your way to work. Check the pressures cold and set them to the door jamb figure. If the light stays on, a sensor or a slow leak is the cause.

Read the DOT code on the sidewall. The last four digits are the week and year it was built, so 3419 means week 34 of 2019. Manufacturers commonly advise an inspection from six years and replacement by ten, whatever tread is left. Texas heat is hard on rubber, so a tire parked in the sun ages faster than the date suggests.

On a front or rear wheel drive car you can replace one, as long as the other tire on that axle is close in tread depth. The gap matters most in rain, where mismatched grip on one axle changes how the car brakes. All wheel drive is stricter. Many makers set a tread depth limit across all four, and the owner manual gives it.

The legal minimum is 2/32 inch, and wet grip drops off well before that. Put a penny in the groove with Lincoln's head down. If you can see the top of his head, the tire is at or below 2/32 and it is finished. A quarter checks 4/32, which is where stopping distance in rain gets noticeably longer.

Not automatically, and we do not do alignments, so we have nothing to sell you here. Get one if the car pulls to one side, if the steering wheel sits crooked on a straight road, or if the old tires wore unevenly across the tread. Fitting new tires does not change the alignment, but bad alignment will chew through them.

Use the figure on the placard inside the driver's door jamb, not the number molded into the sidewall. The sidewall number is a maximum the tire can hold, not what your car wants. Check pressures cold, before the car has been driven, because rolling heats the air and the gauge reads high. A compact spare carries its own, much higher figure.

We torque every lug nut to the figure for your vehicle, usually around 80 to 100 lb-ft on a passenger car and 100 to 140 on a light truck. We look that number up rather than guess it, because an impact gun on its own does not set torque. If a wheel ever feels or sounds loose, stop and call us.

Usually not, but tell us before we arrive. Sealant coats the inside of the tire and has to be cleaned out before a patch will stick, which adds time. It can also clog the TPMS sensor in the wheel, and a clogged sensor sometimes has to be replaced. Sealant is a way to reach a safe spot, not a repair.