Club 4x4, april 2006 – 4x4 Testing

"Medicine from puncture"

We planned to make the tests of puncture sealants long time ago. And we were stimulated by an unusual set: a compressor allowing us to put a sealant under a high pressure.
The fact that compressor has a sealant doesn’t mean using it during each tire inflation. Tire inflation may be occurred either by a regular scheme through the set or using compressors and a bottle with sealant separately. We have decided to look at all the advantages and disadvantages of such kind of construction, comparing two different sets: Airman Instant Tire Repair and a classical type of tire repair. As an alternative to the Dutch innovation a repair tire sealants LiquiMoly, Higear, ABRO equipped with compressor R17 (Ex 626V) popular among off-road drivers.

We have made all comparisons on tires 235/75R15 KAMA “Pillgrim” which were accurately punctured (3 mm holes). If we are to trust the manufacturers - their products can close the holes up to 5 mm. If to talk about the time, here the classical scheme was the fastest, this all only thankful to the BEKUT R17’s high productivity. We expected this difference in speed because BERKUT R17 is dedicated to off-road tires and Airman is mostly for smaller tires. The Dutch compressor (Airman) can be connected just once to inflate the tire. By the way before injection of the sealant into the tire you should firstly take out the tire valve, otherwise “the medicine” may get under the tire cover (outer tire). In this connection there is a note to the manufacturers of such products – the bottles could have been equipped with a special screwdriver for more convenience. After the injection of a sealant it is necessary to drive about 10-15 kms at a medium speed for a better spreading of the sealant inside the tire and sealing of the holes. But even after that the tires have not

stopped deflating – the pressure continued decreasing. May be that was because of the cold winter weather, which have slowed the sealing down. Taking this into account we once again inflated the tires up to 2 atm and made a control check after 1 hour. The results were quite nice. The best results were shown by Airman sealant and LiquiMoly. In the tires having these sealants the pressure almost didn’t decrease at all. Still HiGear and ABRO were also ok. First one has shown 1.9 atm. And the second one – 1.7 atm. So you can see that tire sealants work not worse than the Airman’s system. And if the tires are big, it could be better not to try something complicated but buy a high productivity compressor and a bottle with sealant separately. Instant Tire Repair can deal with small tires.