Wire Tie Tire Change Method

[Grumpy Goat]

The last shop, that was hesitant about the size of the plug, saw the inside of the plug after I trimmed the excess and the outside was excess strings/glue after ~80-miles of running.  It would have appeared to be large, but it was just a finishing nail hole at 45 degrees that had been reamed/cleaned with a typical tire plug tool (Slime, Rockey Designs, etc).  Having had the experience of plugs pulling thru if trimmed too close, I usually leave excess and allow wear to do the trimming.

As for the idea of just using the strings without glue, that hasn't worked for me.

I have a tire that was punctured by an allen key so it had 2 holes close to each other. I used two of these patches which overlapped one another and they look good but I have not yet mounted and used it so I can't speak to the soundness of the weird patch job.

Using strings with glue is better than using strings without glue. The Slime plug presently in my Tracer read tire was installed without additional glue (just the gumminess on the string itself) and has about 3k miles on it and holds pressure better than the other 3 tires on my bikes none of which have been repaired.