I was wondering if fix a flat was any good on a vehicle with as much weight as these. I currently have a front drivers tire that doesn't seem to hold high pressure very well (right now its setting and I am just trying to see how low it will get before I mess with it, just for curiosity sake) and was wondering if I could just be cheap and use fix a flat (or something similiar) or if I should take the tire to a tire shop and let them seal it.

 

Take it to the tire shop, it isn't worth breaking down the sidewalls on that tire by you running it low. They probably will only charge you what a couple cans of that stuff would cost you anyway

 

Don't use that stuff and leave it in there...!
I foolishly tried using Green-Slime(glycol/water+fiber) in my old tires since they were close to the end of their lives and the many persistant little air leaks were driving me crazy. After all, what could it hurt? the tires were eventually going to be junked anyway... WRONG!
I never thought about any consequences to the steel RIM's! They wound up being badly rusted on unmounting of the old tires and it took a LOT of wire wheel dress-up work to get the bead surface smooth enough to seal the new tires.
If your tire has so many small leaks that it requires something like that, bite the bullet and get it patched or replaced.
Also, an aerosol can of Fix-a-Flat doesn't have much propellant to help much with an 80psi loadrange-E tire.

Except for an emergency, I'll never use anything like that in a tubeless tire again!

Keith

 

Totally agree.

Also, WHEN not IF you would need to take that tire in to get it repaired correctly, the shops will often charge you extra to clean that crap out of your tire.

 

Yeah tire guys HATE that stuff, save the goo for riding lawn mowers, wheel barrows, stuff like that.

 

I've never used the stuff...

Doesn't it have a little hose on the top of a spray can that pumps the tire full of plastic cement stuff?

Are you supposed to jack up the tire and spin it while you spray in the can, or what?

(Just curious...)

 

fix-a-flat sucks, i worked at a tire store for 3 years. the stuff never works. i did see a lawnmower tire sealant that worked really well though. The guy was hammering a .5" spike into the tire then he would spin the tire and the stuff would seal. it was awesome.

 

Well, I guess its off to the tire store for me this week, hopefully this will fix the fact that my steering pulls a little and it doesn't turn out to be something more expensive.

BTW the tire still hasn't lost a lot of pressure (at least from a visual inspection), but it still holds less than the other 3, seems to drop to a certain pressure and sit there, or else the leak is real slow after a reaching some pressure.

Thanks for the advice.

 

If you've ever looked inside an old tire and seen some little rubber ***** inside, that's what Fix-a-Flat turns into after rolling around for a long while.
The only real attraction for Fix-a-Flat is it a supposed "compressor in a can". It has enough propellant in it and some latex goo to hopefully hit the tiny hole that let your wheel down. Buy a 12v compressor and a MonkeyGrip plugging kit instead.

I learned my lesson about Green-Slime... It sure does work, but is to be used for only a brief time in tubeless tires(like a deer-hunting expedition).
AND like AMARTINSON said, it may cost you to remove it.
Just make sure they are aware the stuff is in there BEFORE they break down the tire and get sprayed in the face by slime.

I had two tires that the PrevOwner likely ran way too low on air and they developed MANY, MANY very fine air leaks from breakdown of the carcass.
When I air up the tires to normal pressure, they would leak air very quickly. Then they would greatly slow down the leak rate after they lost enough air that they looked low.

K.

 

Tire Slime is your best friend if you offroad out in West Texas. Everything has thorns out there.

MikeyB

 

i was a tire jockey for awile and usally a slow leak is either a pin whole some were or the valve core is bad and slowly leaking out though the vavle stem or the stem its self is just stuck. the green slime is a nightmare speaclly when you dont get told its in there and you got a tire with 55lbs of air and you pull the core out and it goes all over the place [duhh]