Prior to moving to Florida, I don't think I ever had to get a tire patched. The second week I lived here, I got a pretty solid nail in a tire on the Prius. It deflated in an Ikea parking lot. Fortunately it had a donut spare, and I learned how much changing a tire in July in Orlando sucks. I found this little indie local repair shop called Clark Tire & Automotive, and they're pretty great. The reason that I know that is I've been back several times.
What makes it annoying though is that a lot of shops won't even put a Tesla on the stand, for reasons I don't completely understand. There are lift points, and you just put some rubber pucks into those and you're good. It's not a huge deal, because I have a jack and a torque wrench, but still. In any case, we had to plug one of the tires on the Leaf, and now I've had two inside of a few months on the Model Y, on opposite corners. Apparently I got lucky twice, because they have foam in the tires, and the nails in both cases were just between the foam and the side wall. A little to either side and they'd have to replace the tire outright. And of course, there was the great crowbar incident of 2023 on the now-defunct Model 3 that did $12k of damage.
So this morning I pulled off the wheel and took it in. All things considered, it at worst required 90 minutes of my time, but it's annoying. Also, I've only got 18k miles in three years, so two punctured tires seems excessive.
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