Not every leak is in the tread. A fair number of the tyres we get called out to are perfectly sound, and the air has been escaping past a part most people have never given a thought to: a rubber stem about an inch long with a small brass core screwed inside it.
Both parts fail in ordinary ways. The rubber stem is bent by the machine when it is fitted and then flexes gently for years in ozone and road salt, and it eventually cracks at the base where it passes through the wheel. The core is a spring-loaded seal the size of a match head, and grit or corrosion on its seat will let air weep past without anything looking wrong at all. Aluminium stems on wheels with pressure sensors corrode at the joint instead, particularly where a steel cap has been screwed hard onto an alloy thread.
It takes about a minute with soapy water to find and a few more to put right. That is a much smaller job than a puncture repair, and we would far rather tell you so.
Roadworks, building sites and anywhere heavy traffic turns are where punctures come from. Round here that tends to mean Clapham Common South Side and the parking either side of it. Screws, nails, staples and the odd bit of banding all end up in the gutter and then in a tyre. Most of them go into the tread, which is exactly where a repair is allowed, so the odds are usually good. We come to the car, take the wheel off, check the damage against BS AU 159 and fit a proper internal mushroom plug where it qualifies. Anywhere in SW4, at the kerb, on a drive or in a car park.
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Cars around here sit still for days at a time, which is precisely the condition that lets a valve leak go unnoticed until the tyre is properly flat one morning. On the permit streets off Acre Lane and around Clapham North nobody drives far enough to feel a soft tyre, so the first sign is a visual one.
A car losing air over three or four days with no object anywhere in the tread. Soapy water at the valve produced a steady crop of small bubbles from the base of the stem. The stem was replaced, the tyre never needed opening, and the leak stopped.
A metal cap had been screwed down tight onto a weeping core and had been holding the pressure by itself. The moment it came off, the tyre began going down. A new core went in and the cap went back to being a cap.
An alloy stem on a wheel with a pressure sensor had corroded where it met the rim. It was losing air slowly and the sensor itself was fine, so a service kit put it right without the sensor being disturbed.
Water and patience. The wheel comes off, the whole tyre and the valve get wetted, and the air shows you where it is going. If the bubbles come from the valve, the tread never gets touched. If not, we go on and find the object.
It should, as a matter of course. A new tyre on a ten-year-old rubber stem is a job half done, and the stem is a very small part of what you are buying. Wheels with pressure sensors get a service kit instead.
Occasionally a core has simply worked loose and nipping it up is the answer. More often the seal or the seat is the problem, and tightening harder achieves nothing except a rounded core. They are quick to change and cheap, so replacing is the sensible default.
It may be nothing at all. Air contracts as it cools and every tyre reads lower on a cold morning than the previous afternoon. What is not normal is needing to add air every week. If the pressure keeps falling regardless of the weather, something is letting it out.
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