Tire Ballast Seepage Leak

[John_Mc]

As someone as worked on equipment in the rust belt I highly doubt rims survived 24yrs of calcium with no tube.

So I guess I imagined that I never replaced the rims on my 2001 NH TC33D? The rear tires have been calcium filled since the day it was delivered, and there were no tubes in them. I grew up on a far in Ohio, before the advent of Rimguard. Lots of farmers had their tires filled with Calcium Chloride without tubes. They used their tractors a lot more and harder than I did, so their tires never lasted them 24 years, but going tubeless was still a fairly common practice. The key - whether tubed or tubeless was to take care of any leaks PROMPTLY, and in the case of tubeless tires, make sure that the level stayed above the rims.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Since it was filled to the top of the rim, the rim itself was not exposed to air. In a tire with a tube, that seepage gets between the tube and the rim, where there is also some air.

That makes sense. I was thinking they were filled to just below the top of the rim so you could clear the valve stem of fluid with a quick blast of air from your compressor before you took a pressure measurement.

gg

 

[John_Mc]

That makes sense. I was thinking they were filled to just below the top of the rim so you could clear the valve stem of fluid with a quick blast of air from your compressor before you took a pressure measurement.

gg

I always got a little fluid out when checking tire pressure, even if the vale stem was at 12 O'clock. I owned an air pressure gauge made for use with calcium chloride filled tires. It looked like the common "pencil-style". It was made of corrosion resistant materials and the stem/plunger was spring loaded: when you pulled it off the tire, it would retract and "spit" the fluid out after checking the pressure. (You were supposed to put it in water and pull and release the plunger a couple of times after use to rinse it out.)

I eventually lost the gauge and never replaced it. By that time, I could tell by the sound when I thumped a tire if the pressure was where it should be.