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Winter Air Loss in Tires

B

BMW Triumphant

Ed Kilner #176066
When I put the bike away in late November, the tire pressures were a bit low, but I did not increase them. As I recall, 34F / 36R.

Today, I checked the pressure, found 32F / 20R.

I find the rear tire pressure loss a bit of a concern. Bike was put on the road around 20 September and has only a few thousand Km on it.

A friend says the tire stems are not SAE and require a special tool to check tightness. Any comments on this?
 
Tires (and pretty much everything to some degree) are porous. My experience has been tires sitting in a cold (winter) environment will "lose" the most amount of air.
If you still have air after the winter, chances are there is really nothing wrong, if there was they would be flat.
It is possible to get a tubeless tire that is "out of spec" and therefor really porous but again, you would have found them flat.
You can do some searching on the web using "tire porosity" and you will see some of the causes.
Air 'em up and ride.
OM
 
BMW Triumphant said:
When I put the bike away in late November, the tire pressures were a bit low, but I did not increase them. As I recall, 34F / 36R.

Today, I checked the pressure, found 32F / 20R.

I find the rear tire pressure loss a bit of a concern. Bike was put on the road around 20 September and has only a few thousand Km on it.

A friend says the tire stems are not SAE and require a special tool to check tightness. Any comments on this?
Click to expand...

So you lost 16 psi in 4 months. Big whoop. Inflate to proper pressure, check regularly, and ride it.
 
Pulled out the air compressor from its winter cave and did indeed fill up on air.

Will be riding soon, looks like one last weather system coming through and then I'll be good to go.

Bike started up really nicely yesterday.

Thanks for the advice.
 
just put one of ours back in service...been parked since October.
It had 20-26 instead of 33-37 and we have milder winters.

Go ride:thumb
 
At least you checked the pressure. There have been times at the shop I work where the only times tire pressure is checked is when the customer brings their bike in for spring checkover/oil change.
 
i attended an MSF ERC last week. one of the other students showed up on a bike he regularly commuted to work on. there was less than 20psi in his tires. he never checked them.....and was amazed at how much better the bike handled with air in them.
 
MANICMECHANIC said:
At least you checked the pressure. There have been times at the shop I work where the only times tire pressure is checked is when the customer brings their bike in for spring checkover/oil change.
Click to expand...

I've improved a lot since I keep an air compressor available in the garage. I'm much more likely to keep the pressure correct. And, I really like the TPMS feature on the RT. Never liked to lose pressure just checking pressure.

Wish we had some better designed air valves with a more positive engagement.
 
I try to check pressures regularly but often rely on the TPM system to do it for me. :whistle

I have noticed that on the new bike (2105 R1200GS) the tires do lose pressure faster than I would expect. I've got Anakee 3 tires on and love them, but it may be them or possibly the valves.
I'm about to put new tires on (another set of Anakee 3) and will discuss with the workshop.

I was thinking of going to nitrogen when I get new tires. I've read on a number of forums that the larger molecules in the gas is less capable of passing through the permeable rubber.
Apparently it runs a little cooler as well which is not a bad thing, but the thought that it does anything more for tires such as longer life etc. seems to be debunked.

p.s. My wife and I both have Anakee 3 on our R1200GS bikes and have had none of the reported "noise" issues.
We do have a front fender extender and rear hugger fitted. Not certain this would make any difference but I can't honestly say they are any more or less noisy than my Michelin Pilots I had on the R1200R.
 
Something we do at our shop is to make sure the bead seating area on the rim is clean before mounting the new tire. We haven't observed a lot of corrosion on BMW rims in that area, but on a lot of other brands we can see a lot of corrosion, dry powderish debris, and also places where small pieces of previous tires are stuck to the area. We use a wire toothbrush, scotchbrite, and rags with brake cleaner to remove the debris before mounting the tire.

Another place that often goes unnoticed is the valve stem area. That same corrosion buildup can occur there. So we'll remove the old stem, clean the rim there and then install a new stem. After the tire is mounted and inflated we'll use the old water on the bead technique to look for bubbles. There have been times when we've needed to apply a sealant to the bead area, or install a tube.
 
MANICMECHANIC said:
Something we do at our shop is to make sure the bead seating area on the rim is clean before mounting the new tire. We haven't observed a lot of corrosion on BMW rims in that area, but on a lot of other brands we can see a lot of corrosion, dry powderish debris, and also places where small pieces of previous tires are stuck to the area. We use a wire toothbrush, scotchbrite, and rags with brake cleaner to remove the debris before mounting the tire.

Another place that often goes unnoticed is the valve stem area. That same corrosion buildup can occur there. So we'll remove the old stem, clean the rim there and then install a new stem. After the tire is mounted and inflated we'll use the old water on the bead technique to look for bubbles. There have been times when we've needed to apply a sealant to the bead area, or install a tube.
Click to expand...

Voni's K75S suffered air loss and I couldn't find a leak until I carefully examined for bubbles around the bead with the wheel lying flat. Sure enough - very small leaks at several locations. I dismounted the wheel and found signs of corrosion. It took a rotary wire brush in a drill to clean things up.
 
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