The other day, I was chasing down the problem on a slow leaking tire. In the era of tubeless tires with Cushcore, flat fixing, while rare, isn’t trivial. It’s nice when a puncture is obvious but often now, it isn’t.
So we need to go to the dunk tank. Until recently this was my kitchen sink. I hated going to this as the sink isn’t that large and it’s deep for the needs. To submerge a tire in the hunt for a leak, it took a long while to fill the sink with many gallons of water. Worse, the sink needed to be cleared of all dishes and completely cleaned prior to and after this. This was a pain in the ass any time I needed to find the source of my problems.
This leak is worth sharing, it’s a problem that some tubeless tires will exhibit even when new. This tire was “run flat” with a core so it took a little abuse.
It was time to streamline my process. I want to find slow leaks easily and quickly.
I ordered a Winco SPJL-4HL, 4″ Half Long Steam Pan from Amazon. This has an opening at the top of 20″ long and 5 1/4″ wide. The pan is 4″ deep. By my calculations, it was going to be just big enough to get a usable amount of submersion in my largest 622-76 tire.
I was right and it looks to be the perfect tool for the job. It would be nicer if the pan was a thicker gauge and a sealing lid for keeping full in the workshop. I’ll probably just end up with a Carlisle 10250U07 polycarbonate lid as it’s fairly inexpensive online but I would like to have a nicer sealed option for a pan like this.
If folks come up with a better pan than what I show here, please let me know. This is close but a little more submersion with the big tire would be nice.
