Toyota tyre sealant/inflation kit

[m4rkw]

Has anyone used one of these kits to fix a flat tyre? I'm wondering how well they work. Basically it's just a big bottle of sealant that you shove into the tyre through the valve and then inflate it with the compressor.

My wife's rav-4 doesn't have a spare wheel, just one of these kits. I attempted briefly to use it to fix a bicycle puncture just to see what would happen, before noticing that the sealant expired 9 years ago 😄

So tomorrow I will get a new bottle of sealant from the stealership just in case we ever need it, but I'm really curious to know how well they work.

[m4rkw]

The entire bottle of sealant is needed to do one puncture by the way. And it's £70 a bottle. Quite an expensive alternative to carrying a spare wheel it seems.

[flookyk]

The problem with a sealant rather than a spare tyre is it depends on the sort of puncture you get.

Its OK if its a nail/screw in the tyre but not if its a bigger tyre blowout.

When i had the motorbike I had a sealant permanently in the tyres which helped when I had a puncture to stop safely under control on a motorway but you are then left with still having to call assistance rather than on a car with a spare wheel being able to change it yourself.

[m4rkw]

I had that in the tyres of one of my cars once. I'd completely forgotten about it by the time I went to have the alloys refurbished, the guy was not impressed.

[m4rkw]

This inflation kit seems like a sods law deal, if I don't replace the expired sealant she'll need it next week. If I do it'll never be needed.

[Britprius]

You can buy the same sort of product from Aldi for about £1.50. The big problem with using this type of product is that it will often also prevent the TPMS sensor from working ever again. This will add considerably to the tyre repair bill.

John.

[royoftherovers]

10 minutes ago, m4rkw said:

Has anyone used one of these kits to fix a flat tyre? I'm wondering how well they work. Basically it's just a big bottle of sealant that you shove into the tyre through the valve and then inflate it with the compressor.

My wife's rav-4 doesn't have a spare wheel, just one of these kits. I attempted briefly to use it to fix a bicycle puncture just to see what would happen, before noticing that the sealant expired 9 years ago 😄

So tomorrow I will get a new bottle of sealant from the stealership just in case we ever need it, but I'm really curious to know how well they work.

Google it Mark and see what it says.

HJ used to say that it was hopeless. I`ve no wish to use it and have a full spare on the Merc, a Space saver on the Yaris and the Lexus and a can of goo on the Mazda.

[Barry14UK]

I have had a rip in a side wall that that would have been beyond the scope of sealant to close.  Fortunately, I had full size spare in the car I was driving.  I would not be happy to drive without at least having a space saver.  I see that at least some RAV 4 models have space savers and wonder whether this is an option for your wife's car?  The initial cost of doing this would would be more than a pressurized tin of sealant but it would be provide better cover.  These spares may be available on eBay but are detailed here-https://www.partsgateway.co.uk/toyota-parts/rav4/space-saver-wheel 

Interesting comments on Honest John site  https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/askhj/answer/49698/why-doesn-t-the-rav4-come-with-a-spare-wheel-

[Herbie]

For over 15 years, until I got this hybrid, I'd been driving LPG-powered cars. The LPG tank always lived in the spare wheel well, so no room to carry a spare wheel anymore.

I always carried a can of Holts Tyreweld to deal with small punctures and I was always covered by Green Flag/AA/RAC/whatever to deal with a bigger puncture or blowout.

I had no qualms about having no spare tyre and every year we would do our big European driving holidays (Preston, Lancashire to Poland, Czech, Hungary and so on) with just the can of Tyre Weld in the boot. Over the 15 years I needed to use it just once and it was no big deal and it worked very well, getting us to a tyre place where the puncture was repaired without any problems.

So I'd say three things:

1. Don't spend over the odds for 'special Lexus sealant' - there's nothing special about it except the price!
2. You may hear horror stories of having to buy a new tyre because the goo makes it unusable and unrepairable - absolute rubbish. That's just a story propogated by lazy tyre fitters who don't want to get their hands dirty and waste time on having to clean the goo away.
3. My personal experience was in the days before tyre pressure monitoring systems so maybe I'd be a bit more reticent to use goo now. However, looking at it logically, the goo won't be able to get inside the sensor so as long as it's properly cleaned (as it should be) before putting the tyre back on I really don't see it being a problem at all.

[C Mclean]

I didn’t like the prospect of using the goo, so I bought one of these. O.K. For a simple nail/screw type puncture in the tread area to get you home.

 

[m4rkw]

Thanks for the replies. I don't buy cars new enough to have TPS sensors so that's not a worry 🙂 Ill go with the goo for now just because that's what the car came with, hopefully we'll never need to actually use it.

[royoftherovers]

1 hour ago, m4rkw said:

Thanks for the replies. I don't buy cars new enough to have TPS sensors so that's not a worry 🙂 Ill go with the goo for now just because that's what the car came with, hopefully we'll never need to actually use it.

Most people don`t know,or have forgotten that Manufacturers introduced the sealant fix in order to reduce the vehicles weight,in order to reduce vehicle emissions, in order to reduce co2 output, in order to avoid EU fines !!

[Thackeray]

I've wondered for a long time how worth while carrying a spare wheel is and how much more likely is a flat tyre compared to other kinds of breakdown. Over the course of many many years I've had two flat tyres that I can remember. (This doesn't include slow punctures where I could still drive the car.) The first was decades ago in an ancient car that had inner tubes but no spare wheel. Solution was to repair the inner tube by the road side. The second was around 15 years ago when the tyre was completely destroyed at around 80 mph on a French motorway. I managed to coast into a service area and had a spare wheel underneath all the suitcases.

By contrast, I've had three breakdowns that I can remember. The first was in a 1960s Mini. The problem was that it was raining. Solution - walk into the nearest town for a cup of tea until the rain stopped and the spark plugs dried out. The second was in another 1960s Mini. The engine stopped. The RAC came out, borrowed my wife's nail varnish and used it to paint over a crack in the distributor cap. The third was a Volvo. I turned off the engine and it wouldn't start again. The problem was some aspect of the ECU. It meant the car wouldn't start when hot as it was constantly supplying to much fuel. Solution - walk into the nearest town for a cup of tea until the engine cooled down and it was cool enough to start again with excess petrol.

So that's two tyre problems and three engine problems. How do other people's experiences compare?

[m4rkw]

1 hour ago, royoftherovers said:

Most people don`t know,or have forgotten that Manufacturers introduced the sealant fix in order to reduce the vehicles weight,in order to reduce vehicle emissions, in order to reduce co2 output, in order to avoid EU fines !!

Interesting point. My owners manual says that for every 10kg weight reduction I would save approximately 15cc of gasoline every 50km. I'm guessing it's maybe 1% difference to mpg at best.

[m4rkw]

Ok so I did the math. I guess my mostly-urban mpg is around 27. If my spare wheel weighed 15kg and the owners manual is correct then my mpg would go up to 27.11mpg

Less than half a percent, but I guess when you're making manufacturing decisions it's about the aggregate across all cars than just one.

[royoftherovers]

3 minutes ago, m4rkw said:

Ok so I did the math. I guess my mostly-urban mpg is around 27. If my spare wheel weighed 15kg and the owners manual is correct then my mpg would go up to 27.11mpg

Less than half a percent, but I guess when you're making manufacturing decisions it's about the aggregate across all cars than just one.

That`s right Mark.The range average is what determined whether the EU fine was payable.