Punctures?

Not the same problem as you, but I had a tyre which deflated over time, many days. The tyre fitters didn't find any leak. I asked them to try a little harder and they then found a very slow leak on the valve. That fixed, it's been fine since.

That was steady though, not appearing to stay up for days and then suddenly deflating.

nib

Just over a week ago I went into the garage and found the nearside rear tyre flat. A few minutes with the electric tyre pump and it was back to normal, and has stayed inflated. An hour ago I was parked in town and another driver pointed out the offside rear tyre was flat! No spare wheel, even a space-saver, but I had an aerosol can of Holts Tyreweld in the boot. I was amazed when it worked, and I was able to drive a couple of miles home without problem. I'll get another one as a spare.

But I still don't know what's going on with these rear wheels (alloy). The car is a 9 years- old Honda Jazz, and I've never had a problem with the wheels or tyres. Recently, though, the tyre deflation warning light has been coming on once a week or so. However, the tyre pressures have always been fine when checked (the deflation warning light has come on several times over the years and it has always been a false alarm). The tyres are decent (Michelin - Energy I think), and have only done 3000 miles (that's about my annual mileage!). Tread is 5mm.

I'll leave the car overnight to see if the tyre stays inflated. Then I'm not sure if I should take it to a tyre fitters (National is close) and have them check the tyres and perhaps wheels, or take it to the Honda dealers to check if the alloys are still ok. Any comments?

You might have a faulty rotation sensor on one of the wheels. Alternatively you have been driving in circles for too long. John

Be prepared for cost as the batteries are not replaceable!

Avpx

Remove wheel, put in a big tub of water and look for bubbles.

Or, ask the place that fitted the tyre to do that for you.

What can happen is the paint on the inside of the wheel degrades with age and trapped moisture. The result is the bead on the tyre no longer seals well against the wheel. Result slow deflation and never ending tyre pressure pings on the display.

This happened on my A5 with 255x35R19 tyres. I though they were trying a money making scam when my tyre place told me this was why I was getting slow deflation. So they took off the tyre, removed the flaking paint inside, repainted the wheel inner, refitted and balanced the tyre for £22. I needed all 4 wheels doing over an 18month period once the car was over 8 years old.

After treatment, no more slow deflation.

Recently on my car (Ford) it was a dodgy valve. I could go 200 miles without problems and then overnight 32 psi down to 16 psi. This was indicated by the TPMS (Tyre Pressure Monitoring System). My local back street tyre shop had the valves with the attachment to take the type of monitor Ford use in stock.

Because of TPMS concerns/costs tyre shops tend not to replace the values these days when you get new tyres.

Tyre pressures can change with temperature and driving. If your monitor is calibrated for the tyre pressure set during the summer and now it is winter and one or more of the tyres is marginal then you may get a warning that goes away after a short drive of the daytime temperature rises.

On my car it is a user calibration. Inflate tyres to specification and I can select the TPMS reset via a button on the steering wheel selecting a menu that comes up on my dash.

Each of the sensors will have a "10 year" lithium battery cell and after

The battery is probably non-replaceable BUT....

Google suggests that the Honda Jazz has the TPMS sensor inbuilt or attached to the tyre valve.

I can't account for sudden deflation, but there are problems with alloy wheels. They don't hold air as well as steel wheels because, as mentioned earlier, corrosion makes the rim rough and irregular. It also occurs around the valve seat, and valves with TPMS sensors hanging on the back suffer more vibration than those without. So I suppose it's barely plausible than a pothole caused a larger movement than usual in the valve base and left it in a position that leaks more. Certainly my local tyre fitter reckons it's only valves with TPMS sensors which get much leakage trouble.

I've had increasing trouble with tyre leakage over a few years, and finally became willing to spend a bit of money. I've had a 'tyre sensors not found' message on journeys of more than about five miles for a while, but the system is not clever enough to tell me which one(s). I've noticed the 'pressure low' warning comes on only after about 40% loss of pressure, which is almost useless.

My local small tyre fitter doesn't do TPMS pairing, or whatever they need. I finally went to a larger tyre business (not a chain) and they replaced one sensor and removed corrosion from all four valve seats and fitted new valves. Problem solved, and at a not utterly appalling £122. It turned out, of course, that the one wheel which wasn't losing air was the one with the duff sensor.

By the way, a year or so ago I replaced (eventually) the front pads, which is probably about as far as I want to go these days. I could not remove the wheel nuts, properly called lugs. I have metric, imperial and Whitworth sockets, and none of them fitted, nor the four ends of a wheelbrace. It turns out that rather than chrome-plated steel lugs, Ford fits chrome-plated aluminium covers to steel lugs, presumably to save a few pence per lug. Two dissimilar metals, moisture... After quite a lot of effort, I bought proper chromed steel lugs on ebay and took them to my local tyre fitter to change, which they did with no trouble. Well, with a bit of hammering.

Next hurdle: I couldn't get the wheels off. Aluminium and steel again. Slacken all the lugs, lower the wheel to the ground and drive the car gently forward and back, hit the brakes, not the slightest movement. Eventually, after consulting Google, I used progressively larger chunks of wood to bang the wheel on alternate sides, and finally it came loose.

Alloy wheels might be much lighter and not need hubcaps, but they have brought their own problems. And as for TPMS, it has certainly caused me very much more trouble than it's worth, as I can't think of a single occasion in more than half a century of driving where I would have benefited from it. And that's starting in the days when I got a real puncture maybe every month, the road seemed to be littered with nails and screws. I can't remember when I last had a puncture, and it must have been more than eight years ago.

Bloody hell what was he thinking about?

Adam

I usually get a puncture shortly after getting new tyres fitted

In message <101uvub$241is$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Jeff Layman snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Corrosion around the valve . A garage mechanic showed me my problem with soapy water Further down post -yes replacing the tyre pressure valves is f-ing expensive . Unfortunately not an easy DIY job. The batteries last about 8 years though,

Brian

Looks like you've had more than your fair share of tyre problems!

I just remembered that at the end of December both rear brake pads were replaced (by the Honda dealer I always use for servicing). Is it a coincidence that both rear tyres are now having issues, and the deflation warning light started coming on a couple of months ago (it doesn't say which tyre is the problem, unfortunately)?!

Checking a few minutes ago, the offside tyre was only at 25psi (but I only left it yesterday at what the Tyreweld could provide). The nearside tyre, which I inflated last week to 32psi, was down to 12! It took a long time for the inflator to get it to 25, and a good bit longer to get it up to 32. I've now got both at 32, and will take the car to National to see if they can see what's going on. I'm wondering if it's the valves, but it seems odd that both the rears should start playing up at the same time. I'll get a spare Tyreweld at the same time...

I had this on a six year old Astra. The lacquer on the alloys had started to flake off, leaving small gaps which caused a leak.

I ended up getting all the wheels skimmed and re-lacquered.

I had a 2008 Peg 407.

That had alloy valves that doubled as inflation sensors. I had both front tyres changed, and next morning both were flat. The tyre fitting place took a look, and discovered (which I verified looking on line as being very likely) that the sensors/valves had corroded. They were £250 per wheel from a main dealer. I looked on line, found some on ebay, still about 100-150 for Qty 4, and of course of unknown quality or origin.

I opted to throw all four away, and got the tyre place to replace them with just bog standard 50p rubber valves.

It meant of course I lost any pressure sensoring functionality, but fortunately the car was old enough for such monitoring not to be an MoT requirement.

It was fine, sailed through a couple of MoTs without a mention.

The only issue it caused was that at exactly 32 mins into a journey, there'd be a single beep, and the dashboard dot matrix display would say 'No Tyre Pressure' for a few seconds. That was it, certainly no warning again for at least two hours.

I then sold the car privately. The chap that bought it fired lots of questions at me before even turning up to see the car. He'd even checked himself with my local main dealer that indeed it had had main dealer service there for its first three years.

When he turned up, I decided to tell him the story above. He was fine about it.

About 5-6 years later, he phoned me out of the blue. Which was a bit odd, but hey. He was selling the car, and needed a reminder of my story !

That one's easy: spit rubbed over the end of the valve...

More thoroughly and less ad-hoc: soapy water on the valve end and stem, possibly on the rim where rubber and allow meet. Lots of dishwashing liquid, not much water, so it's bit thick and stays.

Not much trouble, and might find a leak.

Thomas Prufer

The latter is the issue here, due to corrosion of the alloy around the hole. It is often forgotten that aluminium is an extremely reactive metal: you never see the surface of aluminium, only a thin layer of oxide, even if you've just cut it, the oxide forms instantly. The trouble happens when the oxide layer gets thick and uneven.

I took the car into National (Halfords) for a free check. They said that the tyres were just old and the rubber was at the end of its life, and so the air was leaking. I thought that tyres weren't old, but a date check showed them to have been manufactured in November 2015! It goes against the grain to discard two tyres with 5mm+ tread, but I'll do it in the next few days.

Not sure what make to go for as a replacement. I only do around 3500 miles a year, and don't push the car to extremes. Probably a mid-range tyre will do.

Anyway, thanks for all the replies to my OP.

Jeff Layman snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote in news:102728n$hc1j$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

They are full of s*it!

Look to the other replies in this thread for the true answer.

Yes, if you buy new tyres from fear-is-the-key.com they will likely wire brush loose lacquer and corrosion from the rim before fitting which will cover the problem but you do not need to shell out on a set of new tyres to resolve the original issue.