Nothing in the tread and it still goes down every week. That is the puncture nobody solves at a forecourt airline, because the air is not coming out through the tyre at all. It is escaping where the bead sits against the rim flange, and it does that when the flange has been bent by a pothole, or when corrosion has raised a crust under the bead and stopped it seating flat.
You will not find that with a look, and you will not find it with soapy water on the tread. With the wheel in a tank the bubbles rise in a fine line along the edge of the rim rather than from one point.
The fix depends on the cause. Corrosion is straightforward: break the bead, take the flange back to clean metal, seal it and refit. A flange genuinely bent by an impact needs the wheel straightening, which is a workshop job on a press, not something anybody can do honestly at a kerb. We tell you which of the two you have.
Sometimes the tyre is fine and the valve has failed. That is what we do first, on the drive in Yeading or wherever the car has stopped, before anybody starts talking about repairs or replacements. The Wood End phone and the Harlington phone ring the same fitter, any hour. Midnight in Botwell, midday in Yeading, the same call either way. The UB3 postcode and a street in Yeading: that is enough.
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Alloy corrosion under the bead is a salt and wet weather problem, and the potholes that bend a flange sit on the roads people here use daily, the A4020 through Hayes Town and the estate roads off Coldharbour Lane. We come to the car with everything needed to get the tyre off the rim, which is the only way anybody can tell the difference.
A car in Yeading lost a few psi every weekend and held pressure perfectly well while it was being driven. There was no object anywhere in the tread. The bead line bubbled the instant the wheel went in the tank, and a corroded flange was the whole story.
A driver off the A4020 Uxbridge Road had a slow leak on one front wheel only. The rim carried a flat spot on the flange from an impact that had never seemed worth mentioning. Cleaning and resealing bought a few days, and we said the wheel needed straightening.
A can had been emptied into a tyre leaking at the bead. It did nothing for a leak that was never in the tread, coated the pressure sensor on its way round, and had to be cleaned out of the casing before anybody could look properly.
The tyre comes off the wheel and the two go in water separately. A tread injury bubbles from a single point, a bead leak rises as a line following the rim edge, and a cracked wheel bubbles from the crack. It is the only way to stop guessing.
No, and anybody claiming to at the roadside is describing something else. Straightening needs the wheel off the car with heat and pressure applied properly. What we can do is find it, reseal the bead so the car is usable, and be straight that it will keep leaking.
It will not. Sealant works by being flung against the inside of the tread and drawn into a hole, and here there is no hole to find. What it does instead is coat the inner liner and the sensor, so the next person has to clean it out first.
A slow bead leak is not the same immediate danger as a puncture, but the tyre spends its life under-inflated between top-ups and that is where the harm is. Running soft builds heat at the shoulders and wrecks the casing from the inside.
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