A fair share of slow punctures are not punctures at all. The valve is a rubber or metal stem passing through the wheel with a small spring loaded core inside it, and every part of that can leak. Rubber snap in valves perish where they pass through the rim, which tends to show up around the time the tyre they were fitted with is half worn, because hardly anybody replaces the valve when they replace the tyre. The core itself can pick up a speck of grit and stop seating, which produces a leak so slow it takes a week to notice.
The test is simple, and it is one of the reasons we come to the car rather than guess. A little soapy water round the base of the valve and over the core shows a leak within seconds. If it bubbles there, patching the tyre would have achieved precisely nothing. If it does not, the tyre comes off the wheel and we look properly. Neither answer takes long, and knowing which one you have is the difference between a valve core and an unnecessary repair to a perfectly sound tyre.
Roadworks, building sites and anywhere heavy traffic turns are where punctures come from. Round here that tends to mean Chancery Lane and the parking either side of it. Anywhere in WC1V, at the kerb, on a drive or in a car park. Old tyres leave Chancery Lane, the Lamb's Conduit Street area and WC1V with us, every time. You watch it happen in Red Lion Square, or at the kerb in Gray's Inn Road. WC1V takes in Gray's Inn Road and Theobalds Road, and we work the lot.
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Parking across WC1V and WC1X is metered or permit and full by mid morning, so a car here often sits in one bay for days between short journeys. That is exactly the pattern that makes a valve leak hard to spot, because the car goes soft while standing and nobody drives it enough to feel a difference. If a tyre is asking for air every couple of weeks and there is nothing to see in the tread, the valve is the first place to look.
A car in a permit bay near Lamb's Conduit Street had been losing air for a fortnight. The valve had perished where it passed through the rim, and there was nothing wrong with the tyre at all.
A driver off Gray's Inn Road had a leak so slow they had assumed a slow puncture. The core was not seating properly, which took a couple of minutes to put right.
A replacement tyre fitted near Chancery Lane went on with a new valve as a matter of course, which is the moment at which doing it costs almost nothing.
Soapy water round the base of the valve and over the core bubbles within seconds if that is where the air is going. It is the first check worth making on any slow leak, because it is quick and it saves taking a sound tyre off a wheel.
A rubber valve lives half in and half out of the wheel, flexing on every rotation and sitting in road salt and grit all winter. It has a working life much like a tyre's, which is why it is best renewed at the same time.
Often, yes, and it is a very small job. If the stem itself has perished then the tyre has to come off the wheel so the whole valve can be renewed, which we can also do where the car is parked.
As standard. It is the one moment when the wheel is already apart and the cost of doing it is negligible, and skipping it is why so many people meet a mysterious slow leak eighteen months later.
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