The seal between a tyre and a wheel is not made by the tyre. It is made by two narrow machined ledges on the rim, one on each side, which the bead of the tyre is pressed against by its own inflation pressure. Those ledges have to be clean and smooth. On an alloy wheel that has been through a few winters they very often are not, because road salt works its way under the bead and corrodes the aluminium into a white, crumbly oxide that lifts away in flakes.
A tyre will seat on top of that and appear perfectly sound. Then a flake breaks off, leaving a shallow channel across the ledge, and the wheel starts losing air slowly for no reason anybody can find. People spend months chasing that. So before a tyre goes back on, the seats get taken down to clean metal, and where the alloy is pitted a sealant goes over the top. It adds a few minutes to a job at four in the morning, which is precisely why it is the step most likely to be quietly skipped, and it is the one that decides whether the wheel holds air for the next four years.
The half-term getaway starts at four in the morning, and so do the calls. Car loaded, everybody in, and a tyre that looked fine last week sitting visibly soft on the drive in Evelyn. Tight in the Creek area, easy in New Cross: neither stops the job. Level in Deptford, sloping in New Cross: we set the car straight first. The SE8 postcode and a street in Greenwich: that is enough.
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Cars in SE8 mostly live outdoors, in permit bays and along Deptford High Street, which means they take a full winter of road salt and spray without ever really drying out. That is the ideal recipe for corrosion under the bead, and it is why so many of the slow leaks we are called to around here turn out to be the wheel rather than the tyre. It is also why the seats get done properly even at three in the morning, when the temptation is to put the wheel back on and go.
A wheel that had been checked twice elsewhere with no puncture ever found. The bead seat was corroded along a short arc and the air was slipping past it, which only shows once the tyre is off the rim.
A car kept on the street near the creek had years of winter salt sitting behind the tyre. Taking the seat back to clean metal and sealing it stopped a leak that had already outlasted two tyres.
A night fit off Evelyn Street where the seats came up visibly rough under the lamp. Doing it properly added a few minutes to the job, and not doing it would have added a second callout.
Very often the wheel rather than the tyre. Corrosion on the ledge where the bead seals leaves a shallow path for air to escape, and it will never turn up in a tread inspection. It is found by taking the tyre off the rim and looking at the wheel itself.
Salt and water get drawn under the edge of the bead over a winter and sit there against bare aluminium. The wheel corrodes from underneath, in the one place that never gets washed and never gets seen. Cars parked on the street all year get it worst, because nothing ever dries out.
Usually not. Most of them clean back to sound metal and seal perfectly well afterwards, with a bead sealer over anything pitted. It is only when the ledge itself has been eaten away, or the rim is cracked, that the wheel is past saving, and we will show you if that is the case.
Exactly as at any other hour. The abrasive gear and the sealer travel with us and the lighting is good enough to see what we are doing. Skipping it to finish quicker would only mean coming back, and we would rather spend the extra few minutes at three in the morning.
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