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Flat Tyre
- Thread starter sualg
- Start date
raynewman
Active Member
Tyre repair shops will plug a puncture for about $20. Gets iffy if the puncture is on a side wall, at which point you might need a new tyre.
It’s cheap because they want a chance to look at your brakes and see if they can upsell you. It’s not quite obvious that we don’t use our brake pads much, so the pricing remains.
Just call them and ask.
And be sure to ask if they’re familiar with jacking up a Tesla using the puck points (with or without the pucks). And switch sentry mode off while they’re working on the car. And if they ask you to put the car in jack mode, that only applies to older models with airbag suspension.
It’s cheap because they want a chance to look at your brakes and see if they can upsell you. It’s not quite obvious that we don’t use our brake pads much, so the pricing remains.
Just call them and ask.
And be sure to ask if they’re familiar with jacking up a Tesla using the puck points (with or without the pucks). And switch sentry mode off while they’re working on the car. And if they ask you to put the car in jack mode, that only applies to older models with airbag suspension.
My experience (in Sydney about 6 months ago) was:
* They normally send a service guy to swap your wheel to a swap one, you then take the flat one to a tyre place and get it repaired and put back on your car, then you call them and they come and collect the swap one.
* BUT when I called they didn't have any swap wheels available, so they then said they would flat-bed my car to their service place - which is a fair way away - where it would sit until Monday (it was Saturday afternoon) to have the tyre fixed there.
* Tesla's flat tyre service (ie the above two things) is only available for some number of km from a service location (might be 50km, might be 100km, I can't remember, not much in the scale of Australia anyway).
So I did what the posters above have suggested and was able to co-erce/bribe a tyre place to stay open for me to drive there (I went to a servo and gave the tyre a good top-up to get there) and have it repaired.
Some notes on this:
* They didn't have jacking pucks (I carry a set) so I had to show them and put them on (they only jacked one corner of the car with a portable jack).
* They had some trouble with the sound-deadening stuff inside the tyre. The apprentice who they initially rolled the wheel over to to plug it got stuck/confused and the boss eventually had to help him out.
* The day after this happened I took out NRMA road service for the car (on top of the included Tesla assistance) just to give myself less "flat tyre anxiety" as I drive a fair bit - not to anything like the degree that @QBN_PC does but not small mileage either.
Last time I spoke to a tyre place, prices had gone up to the ~$35 mark.
They generally won't patch the side wall due to the risk of sudden blowout.
My advice would be to get to a tyre shop ASAP while you still have some air in the tyre. I can tell you from my experience that the spare tyre situation with Tesla isn't good (i.e. absent), and the flat tyre 'service' didn't have the right spare (wtf) so I always travel with a plug kit and compressor.
I‘ve only had one puncture thankfully (roofing bolt right through, about 1 km from home). The leak was slow and I drove to the nearest tyre place the next morning. They plugged it for free without jacking. They did say though that they would refuse to jack it without pads. So I immediately ordered a set
just in case for next time.
Chuq
Active Member
When you say low PSI warning, what exactly? I got the orange "flat" icon on the screen, tapped it and it brought up the psi levels, which were all 38-39 except one was orange. Was yours just a "low" warning, or did it actually say it was flat?
In my case it was parked outside in the evening and quite cold so will see how it is in the morning.
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