Tyre centres aren't supposed to do puncture repairs on run-flat tyres, as they've no idea how far, or for how long, the tyre has been run on no pressure, and damage to the tyre will occur the longer or further it has been run for.

My last puncture was in 2008 - and it wasn't a puncture, but a leaking valve.

Basically, a lot of manufacturers stopped doing spare wheels (and went onto runflats) because it seems a bit silly to carry 30-50kg of weight in the boot for years on end, when it might never be used. By removing that weight they could improve their CO2 figure slightly - and CO2 has been all important to the fleet market and company car drivers.

HJ likes runflats - unless you're very unlucky and get a complete blowout, you're able to get to the next junction on the motorway, and to a safer place than the hard shoulder.

The AA/RAC, etc now carry emergency spares which have different mounting plates, so even if you need to get a replacement tyre, they can keep you mobile.

I don't think percentages or stats will help very much here: it all depends where the puncture is and how big it is.

If it's something like a screw or nail and it's near enough to the centre of the tread, it'll be repairable (less so if the tyre fitter is desperate to meet a quota of new tyre sales). If it's too big or too near the edge, it won't be.

Skidpan's Tyreweld link is interesting: Holts say that 'unlike some of our competitors', Tyreweld doesn't damage a tyre. I'm sure I've read often that the gunk supplied by manufacturers makes a tyre a write off - so there's gunk and gunk. Good point about the possibility of two punctures in the same day.

Edited by Avant on 16/01/2017 at 23:18

I got a puncture about 200 miles after getting new tyres :-(

I took it back to the supplying tyre dealer*, who said that although it was in the tread, it was too close to the sidewall for him to be allowed to do it. But hinted that it was worth trying elsewhere. He didn't try to sell me a new tyre.

My local tyre specialist said no problem. It's now been in use for a year with no signs of trouble.

* I shouldn't say who it was, but an organisation who play things very straight, in my experience - I'm sure the fitter would have done the repair had he worked elsewhere, but he wasn't about to lose his job by flouting his employer's policies (fair enough!).

Edited by Marlot on 17/01/2017 at 07:14

I'm happy-ish to have no spare on the MX-5. I bought a couple of extra wheels on eBay, and when I needed new tyres, I kept a couple back - so I have a spare which could be delivered to me if someone is home.

On my towcar, I abosolutely want a spare. Being 4x4, it's relatively sensitive to the spare being the same make/model/tread pattern as the other tyres. And I don't want to leave the caravan at the side of the road whilst I'm off getting a punture repaired.

My previous experience of 4x4s is that the fronts wear at about twice the rate of the rears. I therefore have two spare wheels, and swap the two fronts for the two spares every 8-10,000 miles. This means that I need to buy six tyres at once, but I get full use out of all six. Previously, I'd only wear out four, and then have the dilemma of the non-matching spare.

In the last 20 years I have had 8 tyres with punctures. 5 were repairable. 2 couldn't be repaired because the nail/screw was too close to one of the sidewalls. The remaining one couldn't be repaired because there were actually two punctures close together. The tyre guy said he thought it had been caused by something like a large staple.

So in my sample 37% could not be repaired.