One of the alloys that I bought second hand doesn't hold air all of a sudden. The air escapes from where the tyre meets the rim. The previous owner seems to have fitted a steel wheel type balancing weight here. I have removed it but the air still pours out. How can it be fixed?

after my experience of such a problem I got the wheels blasted and painted, end of problem

is the rim slightly bent at that point? is it that the paint/surface is scratched/dented if so can it be rubbed back/touched up to smooth the surface over? did it come with a tyre on it, ie you've been trying to pupm it up at home or has a tyre shop had a go at it as they normalyl use something to get a good seal round the rim, mayeb you've tried that already though...

Ned.

[Edited on 16/5/05 by ned]

I bought a set of 4 wheels, a bit tatty, but fitted with tyres, 2 new, 1 nearly new and one quite worn. It is the nearly new tyre that is flat.
They were all pumped up nicely when I bought them, they bounced down the steps to my basement very well. I moved them at the weekend and found that one was flat. I examined it in detail and there are no punctures. with the aid of a bit of water I found the leak by the wheel weight.

I'd thought about getting the wheels stripped but the quote of £211.50 kind of put me off.

First step, DIY, pump the tyre up to 50-60psi and give the sidewall a good thumping with a rubber or plastic hammer in the vicinity of the leak. This often reseats the tyre enough to stop the leak.

If this fails, take it to a tyre fitting workshop and get them the take the tyre off, linish the rim with a wire brush and reseat the tyre with liquid rubber compound, job done, they should charge around £5 for that job.

ive had tyres fitted to old alloys before and had similar problem. The tyre centre removed the wheel and ran around the seat are with a fine brush type thing in a drill (it was a while ago, cant recall exact tool). Itwas ready set up and i got the impression they do this regularly. There was some corrosion in the seat. Afterwards - no problem.