Fix a slow leak in boat trailer tire?

Chucker said:
Looks like a good deal.

If you use them in saltwater, make sure you clean them off really well afterwards. Those painted wheels don’t do well with salt.
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Actually those wheels are painted with the cheapest and thinnest paint available and do not do well in any kind of weather or water. Usually small cracks in the paint start right at the rim and the cancer spreads from there. After that only ambient humidity is all that is needed to make the wheel rusty in just a few years. Good paint on a wheel will last for over a decade.
 
iveofione said:
Actually those wheels are painted with the cheapest and thinnest paint available and do not do well in any kind of weather or water. Usually small cracks in the paint start right at the rim and the cancer spreads from there. After that only ambient humidity is all that is needed to make the wheel rusty in just a few years. Good paint on a wheel will last for over a decade.
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Or spend the extra and buy galvanized wheels. I bought a used boat trailer maybe ten years ago with painted wheels in perfect condition. One year towing my boat around the Basin in winter and the wheels were corroding. I got out my wirebrushes, emery cloth and sanded, rinsed, rubbed with alcohol and sprayed them with black rustoleum. I hope to get a year or two now without serious rust but.......... I'm sure I didn't get it all. I wish I had Ive's big shop to work on things rather than my 1951 one car garage and the driveway! ;-)
 
Josh said:
One of the tires on my little boat trailer has a slow leak and I finally got around to taking it off to get it fixed. Where do you take something like this? Just to Les Schwab (or whatever local tire place)? Do you even repair little trailer tires? Or do people tend to just get a new one? I can see some sort of a little sidewall crack, so this one might be close to “replace” time regardless.

In case it matters, size is 4.80-12 with 5 lugs.

Bonus, taking the wheel off might slow down the neighborhood tweakers trying to steal it!

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$50 for a new tire and rim at Walmart or Bi-Mart..wny not buy two while you're at it.
 
Chucker said:
Looks like a good deal.

If you use them in saltwater, make sure you clean them off really well afterwards. Those painted wheels don’t do well with salt.
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Yeah, they are unlikely to see saltwater on my watch.
 
Iveofione said it all. I did the same as you by using the old tire and rim as a spare. I also put on new bearings and seals under the bearing buddy caps. Then to complete the project ordered two sets of bearings and seals to have in the boat box in case of a bearing problem on the road.
 
Aside from the age/exposure related deterioration it's also important to make certain you're running the appropriate tire pressures for the weight of the trailer; too high and you'll prematurely wear out the center tread (tread becomes convex like a bicycle tire) and too low will wear out the outer tread (and likely cause sidewall heat damage). A few PSI can make a big difference.

You can easily dial in proper tire pressure by running a few lines of thick sharpie marker pen or chalk (best...several inches wide) across the treads, and checking the how the lines degrade after a few miles.

This issue became evident to me with a camper tent trailer in which I literally wore out the center of the tread of new tires (down to the casing) in about 300 miles (necessitating an emergency replacement of both tires) because the tires were inflated to the sidewall marking. Lowering the pressure about 7 PSI resulted in far less (and very even) wear over the remaining 1500 miles.

Unlike many trailer tires where the mfg often doesn't have much of an idea of trailer weight (because their tires could be used on a wide variety of trailer types/loads), none of this is much of an issue with vehicle tires; the vehicle mfg knows the vehicle weight and specs the right tires and pressure for the vehicle.

Periodically checking trailer hubs for temperature at each stop is a good practice as well.
 
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