All of my cars Honda Odyssey, civic, and Acura TL lose air around the tire bead. The repair shop says it’s because of corrosion of the aluminum alloy wheel. The only solution I have constantly received is to have the corrosion cleaned (ground) off. However this doesn’t explain the cause. Some causes offered by the shops I spoke with are moisture in the filling air, road salts used in the winter along with the freeze thaw of water to allow salts to seep into the wheel / tire bead.
Can you offer a definitive cause and possibly a cure to the endless cycle of keeping my tires inflated?
The causes are all of the things mechanics told you. The cure is to… are you ready for this? Really?
The cure is to remove the tire, wire brush the bead and then re-spray the bead with wheel paint. But it will eventually come back as THAT is what Honda did originally.
There is a sealing goo that can be painted on the bead to help seal the tire. I hear it works pretty well but will tick off your tire changer as it is messy.
Likely be cheaper to buy another set of wheels and scrap the originals.
Alternatively you could move to a state that doesn’t need or use road salt.
It’s because of the moisture in the compressed air used to fill the tires.
Once the tires are filled with air, the positive pressure of the air inside the tires prevents anything from outside from getting in.
If the tires were filled nitrogen, that wouldn’t happen.
Tester
This happens to every car around here because of the massive amount to road salt used her eand the fact that we are hovering from just below to just above freezing a lot of days in the winter. It usually starts when the car is 6-7 years old and is the reason I bought a 2012 Camry LE because it came with steel wheels. In the past , when I had cars with aluminum wheels I used a product called NoRimRust that was used by trucking companies but the can I had was from the 1970s and I don’t know it it is still made.
Though I live in the south with no road salt contamination, the low tire air pressure problem is fairly frequent in my 2015 Odyssey. It’s on my tickler calendar to check 'em reg’ly. Love my Odyssey, not so much this tire pressure issue. Joy of Symphony Hill, Tennessee
I have all my new tire purchases mounted and balanced at a garage that wire brushes the beads of the rims and then applies bead sealer to each tire before mounting. I haven’t had a bead leak in over 20 years. The problem is that most garages see tire mounting as a “speed” operation where they only make money if they do it quickly. They almost never use bead sealer and rarely spend much time cleaning the bead on the wheels.
It sounds like you’re having bad luck here. In all the years we’ve had alloy wheels in a fairly snowy area, we’ve had only one bead leak like that. Cleaning the wheels fixed the issue for the remaining years that we had the car.