Fix-A-Flat ruins rims?

[davew833]

Was having a tire mounted for my pearlie today and when the tire guy popped the old one off the rim, a shower of fix-a-flat came out. I'd forgotten it was in there, but upon finding it, the guy strongly suggested that I not ever use it because it can ruin rims. He had a bit of an accent and I may have misunderstood him, but I believe he said it would cause the rims to heat up. Has anyone else heard anything like this? I don't use it much anyway- it never seems to fill the tire to a level that I'm comfortable driving on.

[SoCal LS-L]

Originally Posted by davew833

Was having a tire mounted for my pearlie today and when the tire guy popped the old one off the rim, a shower of fix-a-flat came out. I'd forgotten it was in there, but upon finding it, the guy strongly suggested that I not ever use it because it can ruin rims. He had a bit of an accent and I may have misunderstood him, but I believe he said it would cause the rims to heat up. Has anyone else heard anything like this? I don't use it much anyway- it never seems to fill the tire to a level that I'm comfortable driving on.

No the rims fine. Its just a goo, and youre not supposed to ride on the low pressure for longer than it takes to get to somewhere to fill the tire up. They can only stuff so much gas in those cans safely. The old ones used to be flammable and could explode when dismounting the tire, so they included little red tags that were for the stem, which nobody used

[Crazy_pilot]

Ruin the rim? Not a chance.

That being said, from the perspective of the guy that changes tires, I despise the stuff. It makes my job take 3 times as long as it should, makes it hard to find the hole in the first place, and most types are still horrendously toxic. "Slime", the gooey green stuff, isn't bad, but most give me a splitting headache for several hours.

It's not nearly as bad if the customer at least informs me first, because I can let the air out of the tire outside the shop. Unfortunately most don't do that.

I have seen a few cases where the tire balanced very poorly afterwards because the stuff had hardened against the inside of the tire. I could scrape it all off, but I'm not going to spend an hour on a $15 tire repair when there's a BMW waiting to have $4000 worth of tires installed.

[davew833]

I couldn't reuse the tire because it had a 6" crack in the sidewall-- something I didn't know when I put the fix-a-flat in- so there was no point in anyone cleaning it out. I felt bad that some splashed on the guy- I would have told him if I'd remembered. I was surprised it was still liquid.

[Gamesy]

once the sidewall is gone the tire is fkd