Hi all. I bought a Jayco Swan outback last year. We have travelled about 18.000kms. The issue we have is that one of our tyres keeps losing pressure. We have twice taken it to local Bridgestone store who have checked for damage, punctures etc and have resealed, reinflated, checked under high pressure and telling me there is nothing wrong with it. But 2 weeks later, it has again lost 15 or so PSI. Contacted Caravanland who suggest it may be the rim .. which is undamaged. Bridgestone suggest it could be due to Jayco rim being powdercoated and not sealing properly. Anyone had similar experience ? I am waiting on reply from Caravanland. Cheers
Very slow leaks are a pain in the neck. Take it off, put it in a tub of water, you may have to make up a tub with a sheet of plastic, weight it down & watch for bubbles.
Could be the valve leaking. Could be a crack in the rim. Could be a cut in the tyre that is extremely slow. I had this loosing about 1 psi a day, the air does come out but patience using water will eventually find it. The amount of air is very small but you will find it in water.
Mark the location as soon as you see it, it's easy to loose the position of a tiny cut. Then plug it with your tyre repair kit & pump it back up.
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Very slow leaks are a pain in the neck. Take it off, put it in a tub of water, you may have to make up a tub with a sheet of plastic, weight it down & watch for bubbles.
Could be the valve leaking. Could be a crack in the rim. Could be a cut in the tyre that is extremely slow. I had this loosing about 1 psi a day, the air does come out but patience using water will eventually find it. The amount of air is very small but you will find it in water.
Mark the location as soon as you see it, it's easy to loose the position of a tiny cut. Then plug it with your tyre repair kit & pump it back up.
Hi
This is certainly the answer. With a slow leak you have to be paitient to find the slow release of bubbles. The tire place does not have the time to wait but you can do it. Find a large tub or get a sheet of plastic and some wood or bricks and construct a bath big enough to fully immerse it and put bricks etc on the wheel to hold it down. I suggest a squirt of detergent also in the water so it wets the wheel and tire. Then just wait and watch. If the air is leaking out you will see it. If it is coming out on the bottom side then turn it over to see the exact spot.
It is quite possible an alloy wheel could have some porosity in the metal. Or the beads are slightly deformed and not sealing but this has been checked. Loosing 15 PSI in two weeks would be a regular tiny bubble in my experience. It is possible a nail has made a hole in the tire which has self healed mostly but not completely but if the tire has been tested and inspected then it is more likely to be the wheel being porous which might not be an exact single point.
My tyres have an internal volume of roughly 60 litres, a touch smaller than the 16,000 litre 4m diameter tyres on mining trucks.
Anyway, the wheel weighs 30kg so it has a specific density of 0.5 so It will stay half under water. I could check half the tyre at a time, or I have to put 30kg of bricks on it!
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About 25 years ago, we had a Viscount camper trailer. We were at Coober Pedy (not much water there to check for leaks). I had a half flat tyre. Visual inspection of the tyre showed no nails, screws or cuts. The gardener at the caravan park came over and poured a bit of water onto the bead of the tyre - no leaks. But then he saw bubbles coming from the rim itself. It turned out to be a cracked spot weld of the wheel rim to the central hub part of the wheel. Neither of us had ever seen this type of failure before. I put a tube into the rim and all was good then. Check the bead for leaks as well as the tread area.
had one the same
took it to my local tyre place and they suggested that i leave it in there water tank out the back, over night
came back next day after work and they said yep, we found your leak
the mag wheel had a crack where the spoke meets the rim
Probably rare but as Jaahn pointed out it could be that the wheel is porous. It used to be quite common with aluminum castings like car water pumps and manifolds which would go through a sealing process after casting. one company in Coburg that I used for this sort of work was called Impregnation Services and yes the manager told me they used to get some interesting requests.
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