A tyre that goes down over three or four days with nothing to find in the tread is often not a tyre problem at all. Alloy wheels crack. A pothole taken at the wrong angle pinches the rim between the road and the tyre, and while the tyre itself may survive, the alloy can develop a hairline split, usually on the inner face of the rim or in the barrel where nothing shows with the tyre in place. Air leaves through it at a rate that looks precisely like a slow puncture, which is why it gets treated as one, sometimes more than once.
Finding it is not complicated, it simply has to be done in order. The tread is checked, the valve is checked, and if both are sound the tyre comes off the rim and the bare wheel is pressure tested with soapy water. A crack announces itself as a steady line of bubbles from somewhere nothing should be leaking. Once it has been found, the answer is a wheel rather than a tyre, and we would far rather tell you that than take money for a third repair to a tyre which was never the problem in the first place.
BS AU 159 is not a technicality; it is the line between a tyre you can trust and one you cannot. In practice that means the wheel comes off at your kerb in Sheldon Square or wherever you have managed to park, on Bishop's Bridge Road included, the tyre comes off the rim, and the inside gets inspected for damage you would never see from the outside. Valve in Edgware Road, balance in Westbourne Terrace, pressures before we go. The wheel comes off in Little Venice, not on a ramp in Marylebone.
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Every road around the station carries far more traffic than it was ever laid for, and surfaces that get dug up and made good over and over develop exactly the square edges that crack a rim rather than simply bursting a tyre. Bishop's Bridge Road and the approaches to Praed Street are busy enough that stopping to look after a hard thump is rarely practical, so the impact gets forgotten and the slow leak appearing a fortnight later never gets connected back to it. If a tyre keeps going down with nothing in it, mention the pothole.
A car had been through two puncture repairs elsewhere and was still losing air over the course of a week. There had been nothing wrong with the tyre on either occasion. The crack sat on the inner rim, hidden behind the tyre both times.
With the tyre off and the wheel pressurised, soapy water found a fine line of bubbles running along the inside of the rim. It was invisible on the car and would have stayed invisible for as long as anybody kept examining the tread.
A hard hit can split a tyre and crack a wheel at the same point in the same instant. When one of them turns up it is worth looking properly for the other rather than assuming the visible damage is the whole story.
The wheel itself. Once the tread and the valve have been ruled out, the tyre comes off and the bare wheel gets pressure tested. Hairline cracks in an alloy leak steadily and quietly, and they sit where the tyre covers them, which is how they survive several visits to several people.
One impact is enough and it does not have to be dramatic. The rim gets pinched between the road and the tyre, and the alloy splits rather than bending. Very often the tyre looks perfectly fine afterwards, so nobody thinks to question the wheel underneath it.
Some can be repaired by a specialist wheel refinisher and some should never be, particularly where the crack runs into a spoke or across the bead seat. It is not a roadside job in any event. We will tell you honestly which of those two we think yours is.
A crack does not heal and it does not stay the same length. Topping the tyre up masks it while it grows, and a wheel letting go at speed is a considerably worse event than a flat tyre. Once one has been found, that wheel needs dealing with rather than managing.
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