Last Thursday I took my '05 g35 6MT to a Firestone location and had a thick nail removed from my right rear tire. It was three times the thickness of a regular nail.
They were able to remove the nail and patch the tire from the inside. Service advisor mentioned that they installed two patches to plug the hole since our OEM tires are low profile.
It was holding 35psi for two days which I drove the car for short distances. Then last night I noticed it was down to 32psi. I checked my other three tires and they're holding at 35psi since last week. So it lost 1psi per day after last Saturday which I did not drive my car these past three days.

I will take the tire back to Firestone and see if they're able to repair the patch or install another one. But what happens if they place another patch in the tire and it still loses tire pressure at a slow rate.
Should I pump the tire with air every week which will be annoying or shell out $300 for a new tire?

 

How do you know it's leaking out of the patch? Have you poured water over it to look for bubbles? It could be a valve, or the seam. Or a 3psi flucuation in the cold isn't that unreasonable and may not be leaking at all.

 

I will try to pour water over the area tonight. It is leaking air because last Friday all four tires were measured at 35 psi. The tire in question was the only one which lost 3psi.

Perhaps it could be the valve or the seam. I will mention this to the Firestone advisor.

 

I wouldnt worry about 3psi just yet...keep checking and if the variance gets alot greater, take it back in.

 

they put two plugs in one hole?? ive never heard of putting two plugs into one whole. if the hole is too big, at my store, we dont repair it for that reason and insurance purposes. if anythingn happens to that tire, like it blowing up, they are completely responsible becuase they last touched your tires....i would have gotten a new one, thats just my 2 cents

 

+1,
I work for Firestone in SD and we dont repair a tire if the object that has punctured the tire is more than 1/4 thick. I'd say just get a new tire to be on the safe side.
-GP-

 

Although I've never worked at a tire store and have only performed patches myself, but IMO, if air's still leaking after TWO patches, i wouldn't mess around with a third patch. I mean think of it this way, how stable can three pieces of gonk that literally looks like poop be going 80mph? I'm surprised a professional place such as Firestone would recommend patching run flats.

 

Get this - I was picking up my brand new (supposed flatbedded) coupe from Manhattan Infiniti. I asked to see the car and I was getting a lot of suspicious deflecting answers ("they're filling it up with gas."). I sat at the salespersons desk for a while and then got fed up and walked outside and....THEY WERE PLUGGING ONE OF MY TIRES!

Of course I insisted they put a brand new wheel and tire on before I signed the papers and since this was a brand new showroom without a service department yet, the salespeople actually swapped wheels in their suits.

 

You beat me to the punch. My concern with two plugs is more with the integrity of the tire rather than leaks. I'm surprised that in this litigious society that any Tire Dealer would take the chance.

 

I was in your situation a few months back. The nail was really thick from a bridge construction in my area. I took it to the dealer and they referred me to Mr. Tire. They patched it up, but after a few days, the tire was leaking air. Luckily I have an air pump at home. I left the car at home for a few days, and the air in the tire dropped to 14 psi!!, I called Mr. Tire and explained the situation and they offered to send out a truck to pick up my car. Once my car was there, they replaced the tire and offered a generous discount because of "what might have" happened if I wasn't alert about the situation since they made the decision to patch it.

 

Replace the tire... if it blows up on you, you risk damaging your car and might even endanger your life. The risk is simply not worth the price of a new tire.

Oh, and on performance tires, I have heard that it cannot perform at the same level after being patched or something along those lines... So if you plan to drive your car to its limits once in a while, it is a MUST that you replace that tire.

 

Depending on how much wear you have on your current tires it may be best to change BOTH rears if you have to go that route.

Yes, people do replace one tire at a time in many cases but they are usually Geo drivers obtaining a $27 tire at Wal-Mart.

 

+^1 Don't risk it man. It is a lot of $$ but just think how much it will cost if it were to blow out at a high speed I lost a whole set with less than 500 miles on them a few months back (roffing nails on the freeway!) A couple had ony 2-3 nails towards the center of the tire but a coipe were too close to the sidewall to even think about patching. Good luck

 

ALSO depending on how much wear you have on your tires.... you may just wanna go ahead and buy all 4 even with a couple of thousand miles on them because i had a LOT of problems that almost caused me to wreck at like 65 mph when i replaced only my rears. I figured my front tires had about 3k miles left on them, and they did and i ran them till that point, but when i first replaced my rears i thought my traction would be a lot better but it was actually a lot worse than with the worn rears because now my vdc kicked in in even light turns (turns that i can take at about 70 now), at speeds of like 45 mph and stuff. After i realized this and read about another g35 owner having the same problem i was a lot safer about it and it didnt happen anymore really, but i just couldnt drive my car very fast for a while or very aggressively.