I have falken's 512's with about 9,000 miles on them. About 2 months ago, I started noticing that my rear left tire would lose air pressure at a faster rate than my other tires. For example, I would fill up my tires to 33 in front, and 31 in the rear. When I check my tire pressure in 2 weeks, the rear left tire would be at 27 or 28, with the other three tires very close to the pressure I filled them to originally. There's no way that only one tire would drop 3 to 4 psi in two weeks with the other tires remaining the same.

My question is: how does one repair the tire? My garage can repair punctures/leaky tires (so they say), but how do they find where the leak is? Also, how do they do it (ie, patch it up, glue, etc)? What is the cost generally?

I don't want to and can't really afford to spend more money on new tires, since these are relatively new. Thanks guys, I'm looking forward to hearing your responses before I do anything. Although I've been pumping air on a weekly basis to the back left tire, and it's getting tedious.

 

i had similar problem with Goodyears and the real reason behind the leak was that there was a 3 cuts in the sidewall on the inner side (not on the outside sidewall that we can see) on the rear tire and I noticed a single deep cut on the front right tire outside sidewall that was causing leak. I replaced all the four tires immediately.

do check for any cuts on the inner sidewall

 

If you cnat find any nail or puntcure mark, then the tire could need to be reset on the rim. Either way a tire store can fix just about any leak for only $10.

 

you may have a faulty valve stem.

Try this or a variation of this: Take the tire off and place it in water so that the valve stem is submerged and see if you can see bubbles come up. If not, rotate the tire SLOWLY and check the rest of the tire to see where the leak is.

 

If there is no puncture, then have the tire taken off the rim cleaned up and new valve steams put it. You may just have some oxidation between the rim and the tire.

 

I actually had this happen to me. About every 6 months 1 of my 4 tires would get flat. I would get them reset on there but the problem would return. Finally I had a different tire store take off all 4 tire and clean all the corrosion off the rim. The problem has not returned since.

 

how does corrosion and cleaning the rim affect the tire pressure?

 

it is corrosion on the edge of the rim where the tire bead seals to the rim. If there not a good surface there a leak can occur under certain cirumstances. Most likely every time you take a corner and the side was has pressure applied to it the seal is broken a a tiny bit of air comes out. Slowly over time the tire will loose noticeable pressure.

I used to work at Firestone and saw this happen several times.

 

thanks i30tMikeD... that was very helpful.

I actually went to Firestone today and paid 13.99 + tax to get the tire valve replaced. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Only thing, after I went, I noticed my alignment is messed up now. I wonder if they screwed with it to generate more business????