Keeping air in the %$#@ Harbor Freight tires

Some years ago, I made a giant "furniture dolly" with some oak boards and four Harbor Freight 8" pneumatic caster wheels, for moving heavy items around the property.

The %$#@ tires have NEVER held air for more than a few days. Seems like every time I need the thing the tires are flat.

They're tube tires with no obvious leaks. Yeah, I should've bought better tires, but the ones at TSC are the exact same, only 4X as expensive. I don't use the thing enough to justify spending $160 on new "good" tires, but it is handy.

(quoted from post at 08:05:07 04/16/12) Some years ago, I made a giant "furniture dolly" with some oak boards and four Harbor Freight 8" pneumatic caster wheels, for moving heavy items around the property.

The %$#@ tires have NEVER held air for more than a few days. Seems like every time I need the thing the tires are flat.

They're tube tires with no obvious leaks. Yeah, I should've bought better tires, but the ones at TSC are the exact same, only 4X as expensive. I don't use the thing enough to justify spending $160 on new "good" tires, but it is handy.

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Try changing out the valve cores. If that doesn't work, maybe try some new tubes?

I've seen American made "blem" tires that wouldn't hold air long enough to get to town. The air was escaping from just about anywhere on the tire you wanted to squirt some soapy water.

Tube em or slime em. I don't think they have the butyl rubber air
tight inner layer. I've got 3 of those carts, same problem on all six
tires.

You will need to replace the tubes with decent tubes.

Dean

have you checked the valve stems?

I've used the green slime tire sealant with very good results. I would try a shot of it first before anything more drastic.

I had a front tractor tire with a pretty rotten tube. The valve stem was half way torn off, you could bend it and see inside the tube. It was a special order and and several days to get a new one, and I needed the tractor that weekend. I put in a bottle of green slime and it held fine for about 2 years!

The cheapest and easiest thing to try first would be to add Slime to them. Slime will usually seal tires pretty well and can be added without taking the tire apart, other than removing the valve cores.

Slime can cause balance problems in tires, but for low speed tires that is not really an issue. Slimed tires sometimes will go flat if they are not used for a long time and the semi-liquid all drains to the bottom. But airing them back up and moving the machine around a bit will redistribute the Slime and reseal the tire. I think Slime is a great innovation. I put Slime in all my slow speed pneumatic tires. Works great!

+ 1 on the slime. You can also get new tubes with slime pre installed.

Last week I was rebuilding a not much used but much abused Murrey rider mower. The tires have no wear, but were weather cracked from a few years of setting outside in the sun. All those little cracks leaked on otherwise sound tires.

I bought a 1 QT jug of slime and installed it in the tires. One front that sat flat with the rubber folded 180 degrees really leaked on that fold line. That one would go flat in 30 seconds.
I filled the tire with air and slowly rotated that wheel to distribute the slime. That folded line of cracks on the tire turned green from slime seeping through and bubbled a bit.

Filled all tires with air and drove the mower around the yard for a few minutes to get the slime everywhere inside.

4 days later, pressure in all those tires is still right on the mark.
Additives in slime revitalize the dry cracked rubber and plug the leaks.
I now expect those tires to last the life of the tread, like they have on my old Roper mower which got the slime treatment 10 years ago. Only have to air them up once a year and small punctures self seal.

Slime works well, also the arosol fix-a-flat works well on bad tires. I had one once that was weather checked all over and it fixed it.

That"s because you keep filling them with American air. You need to get a can of China air to fill them with.......:<D

I had some china tubes that allways went flat on me, pumped em up and sprayed em with soapy water and found they were leaking where the valve stem brass met the rubber part of the stem. found that every store in town had that very same brand china tube so I bought a couple of those narrow hard molded rubber wheels that dont need air and put them on the pressure washer and havent had a flat since.

If they were Tubeless tires, I would have suggested breaking the beads down and smearing a nice bead of "Gasket Maker Silicone" on the Bead area and re-inflate them..
I find leaks at the Bead/Rim more times than not on tubeless..
Slim is the best you can get...

Ron..

China air from one of the big industrial citys is likely to be as effective as "slime" at plugging air leaks in those China tires ;-)

I swear with newer Chinese tubes that the air leaks right through the rubber. Try some liquid laundry starch, supposedly this will help. I know starch is the main ingredient in most commercial (slime) leak preventers.

Wow,...a lot of hot air on, "keeping air"! I love it, and this will probably be a great lesson learned for me sometime in the future? :lol:

Nothing good ever comes from buying at Harbor Fright.