When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
All last summer and now in storage for the winter, my front passenger tire had a slow leak that I could never find.
Had the tire removed and checked for cuts, punctures bad beads etc. nothing.
Sometimes nothing. Perfect inflation, driving etc. Other times, it sat in the garage and over a week would lose half or more of it pressure.
Well yesterday, I noticed it low once again up on the lift so pumped it up.
Wouldn't ya know it...I hear a faint hiss.
Failure is/was....the valve stem all along. Not the valve, the stem. Grab the metal stem and bend a bit and sure enough, out comes some air.
Spring is coming so I'll take the wheel off and get it fixed before hand.
Question. Not that I can fix it myself but are the the metal shafted valve stem on our vehicles just a push through rubber grommeted thing or is there a nut on the inside that may be loose?
Because of the TPMS system, the tire will have to have the bead broken, and you will discover that the TPMS sender is literally bolted to the wheel. With the tire deflated and the tire bead broken, you can reach inside and see what your issue is--perhaps a loose bolt that secures the TPMS sender to the wheel.
Depends on the type of stem you have. If it is rubber you are out of luck and nothing can be done from the outside. If you have the full metal stem the nut will actually be on the outside of the rim located just below the valve cap. While you can not do any actual service with dismounting the tire, sometimes the problem is just the nut needs to be slightly tightened up. If that is the case you can do this yourself so it will fold air for you to drive it safely to get in for service. Below is a picture of what the two typical types of stems look like. you can see the nut on the metal one. Be careful when/if you tighten it. They are aluminum and do not require a high torque spec. A little goes a long way.
If you have TPMS, try tightening the nut as another poster's input. However, exercise care.....there is a torque value for that nut and it is quite light. Off hand I don;t have the exact value.
I had some wheels installed over the weekend and it seems that the stem was not tightened enough and now I have a flat tire. I'm uploading the instructions with torque specs as a PDF in case someone runs into the same issue.
03-05-2019, 03:37 PM
Found the slow tire leak = valve stem
