Faulty Valve Caps?

OK so I have a BAD habit of picking up screws, nails, bolts, etc. in my tires. So I thought it would be a good idea to get those valve caps (made by Slime) that let you know when there is enough pressure in the tire. (I know we have the sensor for this, but it makes it easy to glance at each of the tires and see which one is under inflated.) I got the valve caps around December. And since about January or so, my tire sensor light has been on. I looked at my caps to see which tire it was (front passenger-everytime), fill it up, and tell myself I really need to get the tire checked.

Well on Monday I finally had the chance to bring my truck by the tire place and get it checked out. I had two tire pro's check out my tire, squirt it down, add air, squirt some more, you know the whole deal- and they couldn't find a thing wrong with it. Then they checked my valve stem - still, nothing! It wasn't until one of the guys was screwing back on my valve cap on that he heard the air coming out. Evidently, the way the cap screws on that particular tire, an excess amount of air is pushed out and was causing my tire to constantly leak air and get low. He replaced the stems with the normal black ones and I haven't had a problem yet.

I'm not sure why I only had problems with one tire, but I know that it's a lot nicer to walk out to my truck and not have to pull our my air compressor and fill up my tire every other day. I paid somewhere around $10 for these things and they ended up being pretty crappy. (Not mention they're pretty ugly looking on the truck.)

Just wanted to share my experience incase anybody else was thinking about putting these on. Other people may have great things to say about them, but I don't. Waste of time and money!

 

Those silly caps work by holding the valve stem down. You are relying on the cap and nothing else to keep the air in your tire. Any defect, piece of dirt etc and the seal in bad resulting in a leak.

I do quite a few tires here at work and have never had good luck with those style caps. My advice, chuck em in the trash and buy a good guage to check your tires once a week with......

 

those things suck always leak
we remove them all the time

 

Yes, thumbs down to them! Viral syndrome... umm, is that what you are calling my "talent" of collecting nails and screws in my tires? If so, thanks! I need the help. Between those and the damn rocks my windshield gets...

Thanks, the guage was bought a couple months back and those caps were tossed soon as I finished taking the pics of them.

I agree!

Thanks tire guys! Kinda happy it wasn't just my bad luck!

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

No problem!

LOL- nevermind! Yeah I'd forgotten about that being there. Maybe I should crop a little... Much better btw