Here is a leak with no hole in it. The tyre seals against the wheel along a narrow ledge inside the rim called the bead seat, and on an alloy that ledge is bare aluminium under a thin coat of paint. Chip the paint, add ten winters of salted spray, and the aluminium oxidises into a rough white crust. The bead can no longer sit flat and air walks out through the gaps.
It shows itself overnight because that is when the car is still and cold. Driving warms the tyre, the rubber softens and presses into the roughness, and the leak more or less stops. Park it, let it cool, and the bead stiffens and lifts off the high spots again. So the tyre is fine every evening and soft every morning, and anybody who tests it by inflating it and staring at the tread finds nothing.
The way to find it is soapy water along the rim edge with the wheel turned slowly. The way to fix it is breaking the bead and taking a wire cup to the seat until it is bright metal. Both happen at the kerb, at whatever hour it was discovered.
Nobody plans a tyre emergency into the diary. We are not: dispatch runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, across SE5, and the van carries enough to finish the job on the spot rather than book you in. A 4am Myatt's Fields call and a noon Loughborough Junction call reach the same fitter. Whether it is Myatt's Fields in rush hour or Denmark Hill at midnight, we answer. A SE5 address in Walworth and one in Denmark Hill are the same round.
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Cars here spend most of the week at the kerb rather than on a drive, and the streets off Camberwell Church Street get gritted hard every winter. Salt water sits in the joint between tyre and rim and works away at the alloy underneath. That is why bead leaks outnumber punctures on some cars in this corner of SE5.
A car parked near Camberwell Green had been topped up every morning for a fortnight. Nothing in the tread and nothing at the valve. A band of white corrosion ran around a third of the bead seat. Cleaned back, resealed, and it held.
Kerbside wheels take the salt spray and the puddle water, so corrosion often turns up on one side of the car only. On a vehicle off Grove Lane the nearside pair were both leaking gently and the offside pair were clean.
A shift worker leaving home found the front flat, having driven it back without trouble the night before. That pattern points at the bead rather than a puncture more often than not, and it did here.
Temperature. Warm rubber in the bead is pliable, presses into the roughness on the rim and closes the gaps. Once the car has stood a few hours and cooled, the bead hardens and lifts off, so the leak absent last night is there at six.
No, and it makes the eventual repair worse. The spinning wheel throws sealant outwards onto the tread and almost none reaches the bead area, which is the one place it would need to be. You end up with a coated liner and the same leak.
Usually not. Ordinary surface corrosion cleans off and the seat seals properly again. What does not clean off is pitting deep enough to leave a channel across the seat, or a crack running in from the rim lip. You are told which before anything is spent.
If it holds pressure long enough to be parked safely, daylight is fine. What we would rather avoid is somebody driving it soft, since a bead leak is harmless and a tyre run flat is not. We are out through the night regardless.
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