This morning I had to pop in and visit our local tyre shop as the front left tyre was showing low tyre pressure with the onboard sensors. I had pumped up the same tyre two days ago and yesterday it dropped 1 Bar of pressure so the air leak was not a slow puncture. Normally a puncture that bad would be visible and one would feel the air coming out just by running your hand over the outer surface and I had no luck locating the puncture.
Normally I would have just gone to the local garage and have them check it out but I was not sure if this was a faulty valve or just a puncture. There was nothing obvious like a nail or a bolt stuck in the tyre so I thought rather go to the professionals and get it checked. These tyres are new and this is not a beaten up work vehicle so this must be treated differently.
Not one but two different punctures were found with the second one below on the edge of the tyre wall. These were not visible as they were on the internal side of the tyre. For some reason my gut told me to go get it looked at properly and not cut corners going to the chap on the garage forecourt who normally inserts a plug in the tyre.
If i had driven to the local garage they would have repaired the tyre with there plugs but the tyre would not be safe due to where the one puncture was located on the edge of the tyre wall. This is the part of the tyre that take sall the weight and pressure so having a weakness on this part is better to just change it for a new tyre. Better safe than sorry even though it kind of sucks that we have not even had the car a full 7 days yet.
I can probably make a claim with the company where we bought the car from but I do think this is from a pot hole granny must have driven over. Where the tyre has been punctured with the distance apart it looks like a pot hole with a sharp edge. If there was a puncture when we bought the car the low tyre pressure warning would have been highlighted the following day and this was not the case.
First thoughts were of repairing this tyre and then swapping out the tyre with the spare wheel, but that spare was those thinner biscuit type tyres and that would not work. I hate those biscuit looking tyres that are half the width of anormal tyre and are literally a temporary fix. The roads are that bad in South Africa even pot holes you do not think are that bad they are still a risk driving over even with new tyres. The replacement tyre was $200 so it could have been worse and have already told granny to be more vigilant when driving. This particular brand of tyre comes with a 12 month guarantee which is at least something.
