On 10/30/05, Matt Trebelhorn <matt.lists@trebelhorn.com> wrote:
>
> So I just bought a '76 fiat spider. Pretty decent little car, all in
> all.
>
> One problem the owner pointed out sounded a little strange, though.
>
> The tires lose air pressure pretty quickly. Tires are new, valve
> stems are new. Wheels are 30-year old steel fiat wheels. They're
> old, but they don't look banged up.
It could be any number of things. You can spray the tires with soapy
water (though a real tire leak detector works orders of magnitude
better) and see if you can find the leak. If it's the wheels, the
likely places are the bead sealing surfaces, or where the knave plate
is joined to the wheel base. The solution to the first is to dismount
the tire, clean the flanges, put a sealer on them, and then remount
the tire. The solution to the second is get new wheels. (Unless
they're tube type, in which case, put a tube in them!)
If you had alloy wheels, a third likely candidate is the use of the
wrong type of wheel weight. There are about six different profiles,
and the wrong one can force the tire away from the flange a tad,
causing a leak.
--
David Scheidt
dmscheidt@gmail.com
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