My trip to Vegas to see my friend Heather had a few wrinkles, but was worthwhile.
On the way down Friday night, I realized that I had forgotten to check the pressure in the front driver’s-side tire, which has a slow leak. So I stopped at the next gas station. Sure enough, the tire was noticeably low. (Which is rather annoying, considering I bought the car brand new in March, and only have about 11,000 miles on it, and the tires are supposed to be good for 30,000.)
Deciding that it might be best to seal the leak, I bought a can of tire-fixer stuff. (The didn’t have Fix-A-Flat, which I’d used successfully before, but they had something similar.)
This particular product had a plastic tube with a connector to screw onto the tire stem. I followed the directions and screwed it on, then pressed the button to inflate the tire with the special blend of herbs and spices (or whatever it is they put in those cans) to seal the leak.
Instead of going into the tire, though, the stuff just fizzled out around the place where the tube connected to the connector. (Very sticky stuff, which took me five minutes of scrubbing to mostly get off my hands.) Apparently the can I had purchased was defective.
Abandoning the attempt to seal the leak, I just inflated the tire and got back on the road.
I made it to Las Vegas without further incident.