planux

Helloooo.... been a while since I've lurked around AW.

I was up in Placerville on Saturday and managed to put a fairly sizeable hole in my passenger front tire. Jacked up the car, pulled off the tire and took it Walmart (the ONLY tire store in Placerville open on a Sunday!) to have it patched. They said that, had it been 1 cm to either side, they wouldn't have been able to patch it (it was pretty close to the sidewall).

Anyway, they patch it up and balance the tire. Again, this is the front passenger side tire. I go back, put the tire back on, badda bing, badda boom, head back down to the hill for toasty Sacramento (110 degrees that day... ugh).

I get on highway 50 and I notice the car is pulling decently hard to the left. Yes... the left. I stopped at a gas station and made sure all the tires had exactly the same tire pressure (36 psi). Got back on the highway and I think it was actually pulling *more* to the left.

I checked the tire again today... the tread is pointing in the same direction as it is on all the other tires. The tire has significantly less tread left than all the other tires, but I'm not sure if it was that way before 60 mile drive from Placerville to Sacramento or not (during which the car was pulling to the left, indicating that there may have been some unkosher tread wear going on).

Car didn't pull before the flat, and the tread is getting low enough on that tire that I might need to replace it... which means replacing all 4 tires right? For the record, they are Continental something-or-others (whatever came on the car when I bought it used from the dealer).

Any ideas? I screw up something when I put the tire back on the car? The car just happen to go out of alignment coincidentally? The Walmart guys sand off a few 32nds of an inch of tread when I wasn't looking?

Thanks for any help,

--Paul

Phil type 951

i would not trust walmart to do a good patch or balance job but it got you home and that the main thing.

I'm sure your car is pulling because of the patched tire or becase the wheel is not sitting right. unless the flat was caused by you running over a 4x4 beam that fell off a truck.

measure the tread you have left on your tires you might be able to get away with replacing only the worst 2 but according to audi you should replace all 4 @ once.

The Red October

Whatever you hit that caused the damage to your tires has knocked your suspension out of alignment, and it is eating the tire up because of the extra friction. You probably did not notice it before because you had a flat tire. Put your spare on, I bet it will pull just the same. But don't leave it on, because it will get eaten up too.

Have the car re-aligned.