Anybody familiar with green slime to fix a leaking tire?

if you use it, be sure to read the can. a guy I know calls me telling me he is stranded on his bicycle with a flat. he went to the gas station, bought a big can of slime and filled his bike tire up. used the whole can. after it went down again he filled it from the air hose and it went down again.

he didn't spin the wheel after filling up. so the full can of slime was at the bottom of the tire, while I assume the hole was at the top.

 

Its not rocket science...Take a antifreeze jug, or wiper juice jug, Drill a hole in the cap...take out the paperr inside the cap or it will plug the hole when you squirt your soap mixture out.

Mix up a batch of dishsoap and water, Check around the stem, and the wheel itself in case it is cracked, also the beads on both sides, and the tread.

Even a very small leak will start foaming up after a couple minutes Check each one of these areas and give it a couple minutes on each spot.

Then fix it right.

 

Fix-a-flat does. Slime does not. They are NOT the same thing! I have tires that have had it in them for 7-8 years look new inside when removed.

 

On an air bag? I'd love to hear that one............

 

They sell bicycle tubes with it already in it. Those work great. Never tried it in a car tire.

 

We used to run a New Years day dirt endoro race up here and put a bottle in every tire.There was so much scrap on the track during all three classes you needed to do anything to survive as long as possible.Worked very well and I have used it in a pinch when I was out of town.

 

We used to use it all the time at work, but only in lawn mower tires and stuff. I have no experience with it in car tires, but always worked well on the other stuff.

 

I'm sure there are situations where Slime works as advertised. Anybody who likes it in their bicycle tire can count themselves lucky. Loads of fun to clean that shit off of everything after a blowout. Seen it clog up air valves,too,no air passing in or out.
And yeah,in my bike shop,if you blow out a Slime tube,we will charge more to clean that shit off.
Just cause Walmart,etc.,sell tubes with it already in them doesn't make it a good idea.
I would never use it in a car tire..ever

 

Slime isn't an aerosol you have to remove the valve stem to put it in then drive the vehicle to cover the inside the tire. There is a Slime for tube and tubeless tires.directions on the bottle or gallon jug tells you how much to use for tire size.The first time I saw slime used was in the Baja races in off road tires. We didn't have it out here yet then this was late 60s early 70s.don't use slime if you use balance beads it will glue them into a lump inside the tire. I use it in my garden tractor hobby all the time it's sealed up 40 year old dry rotted tires till I could get new ones in. I still have several "junk" tires that I've Slimed and they hold air just fine that includes side walls,But it's easy to roll a small tractor tire around to coat a side wall.wire brush the inside od your rim clean and then wipe it with vinegar then paint the inside every place BUT where your tire seats to seal off the aluminum that should end your leak. You don't want paint on the bead use bead sealer there.

 

Where do you get "bead sealer"?

 

Any place that sells tire supplies. I get mine from NAPA


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Yep.. had a trailer tire that kept going flat and could not find the leak with water, soap or any other method, finally took it to the tire shop and had it broke down and long story short installed a new stem, wire brushed the beads and smeared bead sealer around it...been holden ever since.

 

I've got two vehicles that both have one rear tire that goes down over the winter! Takes a few months to get low enough to notice, but it's irritating. I've changed tires on both vehicles over the years, and the leak stayed, so it must be the rim, but nobody can find it. One is an old 8"x15" ET slot, and the other is a 10"x15" steel wheel. I've owned the steelies for over 20 yrs., and the one has always leaked.

 

I use it on my 250r and it works good for that.

 

In the past on aluminum wheel with pores leaking. I paint the wheel with clear rattle can paint. Be sure to do this with no air in the tire or if you can break down the tire and paint both surfaces. I have also used silver paint.

 

x2!

 

It works, can tell you from first hand experiance. Used it in our Off Road Race Car doing the Baja 1000 ran over a Cactus and had no spares left. Used it ran for another 50 miles in rough terain until we got to our next pit area. Besides they also sponsor the races and racers so plugging a company that gives back isn't so bad.

 

I use it in everything that is tubeless and it works fine.

My quad Fourtrax's get it when I mount new tires to prevent unwanted suprises on the trail.

I find that when I use it I don't need Tire shops to work on the tires untill the they are worn out.

When I buy new tires I let the tire men know that there is slime in the tires so that they are prepaired for the mess.

They don't probably like it but they never complain.

I would rather tick off a tire man than have to change a tire at midnight on the Freeway.

At the first sigh of a leak I install the prescribed amount of green Slime.

I buy it by the gallon at Walmart for about $28.00.

Dick

 

I've used something like that so I could get to the tire store, and the big chain did charge me $10 to clean the tire, but money well spent. Avoided having to have my wife drive down in another car, and change the tire at my work.

But to OP, chronic leak might be valve stem other stuff, just go to a shop (of course).

 

Most of the time it's the old crusty bead area or a bad valve/stem, easily found with the spray bottle and soapy water, but the porous alloy rim thing is a little harder to find if it's a small spot. An old friend was an excellent front end man (now retired) and also a hot rodder and into sand buggies, and was an ace with porous wheels. The trick was to put the whole assembly in the dunk tank and submerge it, and walk away for a while. Come back in about 20 minutes, and look for an itty-bitty bubble forming on the alloy wheel. If nothing, walk away a little longer and do something else for a while. Nothing? Flip it over and start again. Once you find the porous spot, a couple light tunks with a large ball pien will close up the hole, and if you're careful and use the large (radius) pien, you won't even see where it was hit on your purty wheel

 

I am still seeing a lot of confusion and conflation of Slime and other dissimilar products.

 

Slime works ok for a short time. The 17" alloy wheels on my wife's DD seem to lose air faster than the alloy wheels I have had on 20 cars. Sometimes it is just a bad wheel. We used Slime to seal a tire that would lose 5 lbs a week. A while later I found this little splinter of a staple in the tread, because of the green outline.

I then plugged it and moved it to the spare. It still holds 40 lbs, 2 years later. Yes I check the pressure in the spare.