Toyota Steel Wheel 42601-60361 Leaking - What to Do? A Corrosive Update! (1 Viewer)

[greentruck]

Sure hope there's a solution on this one. I have our 97 FZJ80 shod with 255/85R16 BFG KM2. In fact. just renewed the tires. When we bought the truck, the alloys were in rough shape. The best one went underneath to replace the porous oneon the spare, the next best two went on our M101 CDN. The other one was trash like that found on the spare. I don't mind steel wheels, especially good ones, so got together with CDan and he set me up with 4 of the Toyota OEM 16x8 steel rims, P/N 42601-60361. They look good and held up well to 8 salty Midwest winters.

I noticed I had a leak in the DS front. Put 45 lbs in it because I have a 100 mile round trip in the morning to see one of my docs, then noticed whatever was leaking was now louder and you could even feel it playing on your skin if your hand was in the right spot. A bright light and some further examination showed what appears to be a small area were the weld is leaking air between the rim and the center disc.

What I need to know is this fixable and how big a deal is it to do so? Can the local tire shop handle it? I am hoping a quic spot weld on the inside will do the tric, but then I worry that rust is at work inside unseen, but don't really see how since the outside is so pristine.

 

[unklwedy]

Innertube??

 

[greentruck]

Yeah, if I needed to limp home from far away that's a good option. I wonder about that long term on a steer tire. Do they even make inner tubes that fit properly in a modern radial?

The thing is that the hole is so small that it doesn't get vigorously leaking until you get above ~30 lbs. So it takes a couple of days before you get down to that crucial 12 lb range when things get dicey if you're off-road and need an extra-long footprint. Not so good on the interstate, ya know?

I'm tempted to try CA on it. Deflate after taking the weight off it with the jack, rotate so that pinhole is at the bottom, flood it with a drop of CA, wipe clean, repeat a couple of times. Assuming the CA gets down into the pinhole, it may hold. Epoxy on the inside could also work, but would require a dismount.

Thinking a spot weld inside would be best in terms of appearance, just not sure if that has enough access to be certain and if this is standard enough practice to overcome worries about liability on such a fix.

 

[FJ73Texas]

I have seen this type of leak before on full face steel wheels where cylinder portion is butt welded together (leak occurs at some point in the butt weld). I would assume that a small spot weld or JB epoxy would probably fix it but don't take my word for it. If it was happening to me, I would just get a replacement wheel.

 

[greentruck]

Yeah, inclination is towards just getting a new one, if available (IIRC, still was last I checked.) What I really need are 4: one to do the spare, one to replace this one, and two more to set the trailer up right. At $150 or more each (just an estimate based on nearly decade-old pricing n the first set), my wife won't be happy to hear that.

Wonder if the internal "flat fixer" stuff would help here? Not liking that option (the tube sounds better, but not by much) but going to have to make a choice here eventually. Fortunately, it takes about 10 hours to go from 45 lbs to 20 lbs, where you can hardly detect outflow fro the pinhole.

 

[greentruck]

Thanks to unklwedy and FJ73Texas for the suggestions. Still pondering, but found that the leak is so small it takes 24 hours to go from 45 lbs to 22 lbs, where it slows down even more.

Gonna try a quick fix. Take off tire and de-air horizontally, hoping I don't break bead. Apply gap filling CA to the cleaned leak location. Somehow apply enough air pressure to the leaking area to force the CA down into the gap. carefully wipe to clean. Once it sets, cross-fingers and monitor to see if the leak remains or is gone. Since there's very little heat, the CA should hold up if it gets locked in the hole. If not, I'm no worse off than at present and I'll be looking for Plan B.

Will be a few days, but still open to suggestions.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

I'd go at it from the inside with a welder. If that didn't work then a new wheel. Anything done from outside is destined to fail at some maximally inconvenient time in the future. But seriously, you can obviate this entire issue for $125. That's what I'd do.

 

[greentruck]

I can probably scrape up $125, but won't really solve it until I get rid of those old alloys, so that would be another $375.

Really, are these steel wheels running cheaper these days? I might just bite, once I find my next $500

More monitoring today showed it went from 45 lbs to 25 lbs in the first 8 hours. Assuming it performs like the 24 hours test did, that means it takes 16 hours to lose the next 3 lbs to get to 22 lbs. I tend to agree that inside out and permanent would be best. It's just such a tiny hole, like having a zit on your forehead. Might as well try cheap and easy, as doesn't seem to be a chance of forgetting to air it up or not noticing if it fails or does run low. It's tugging at the wheel already even at 25 lbs.

A fix that solves it for now suits my present budget, but if it holds even better as the whole deal is certainly impetus to get it done right finally.

I did come up with several methods to force CA in from the outside, probably the key to any longevity

 

[greentruck]

In the absence of a ready stack of cash or better ideas...

Superglued it.

So far, so good. It holds pressure, so we'll keep a close eye on things and run it.

Even if it only holds for a few days, that would verify the process as a field fix. Not that you couldn't keep putting air in on a daily basis the way this behaved. It would leak down to ~24 psi in a few hours, then it would hover between there and 20psi for days. So it's also safe as a field fix, because even if it does fil, you're back to a slow leak.

I used a quality, fresh, medium gap-filling CA. I laid the tire down , propping it up slightly so the leak was at the lowest point on the rim. I carefully removed the valve stem, prevented it from flying away to who the heck knows, de-airing the tire, then be careful to not break the beadI cleaned the spot with one of the Mr. Clean eraser things to avoid getting anything down into the pinhole that would compromise the bnd. I applied a small bead of CA. I used a rubber earbulb, the thingee Mom washed the wax out of your ears with when you were young. The tiny mouth of the earbulb was big enough to cover the leak. I applied the tip, forcing air into the top of the hole to push the CA into it with air pressure. My goal was to get enough CA into the hole that it who get to someplace wider. That way when the tire was aired back up, the CA would be wedged into the hole from the inside, hopefully keeping it in place.

So far, so good.

One concern was that CA can be de-bonded with acetone, which is found in many paints and some cleaning fluids. To protect the patch, I mixed a small batch of epoxy and applied it over the former leak spot. Because both are essentially clear, the wheel still looks good.

 

[greentruck]

No detectable leakage at the patched spot. It's cooled off abruptly overnight, so not sure my psi readings are all on the same page as they were about 45 lbs when I first pumped it up, but now shows still over 40 some 15 hours plus later. It may still have a very slow leak, might just be the temp differences between the hot air that went in when inflating and the cool air inside the tire now. We'll see what it does, but seems to work at least as a field repair. Here's a pic.

The black spot is from marking it, not a issue from it.

This angle shows how it is close to this manufacturing mark.

The flaw itself is under the slightly brighter spot at the weld under (to the left in this angle) the mark.

 

[greentruck]

We're not quite to 48 hours in, but it's not a permanent fix. It is losing air still, but far more slowly. It's at 30 lbs, Given the unpatched leak slowed a lot when it got to 25 lbs, I;d expect the current leakage will be pretty slow from here after the initial drop. That initial drop was much slower, as it would go from 45 to 25 psi in the first 8 hours or so.

Thus, keep this in mind if you need a similar field expedient repair. It won't solve every leak, as it must be small. It likely won't be a permanent solution, but it has turned the situation from airing up every day to maybe a twice a week visit to the compressor, which is considerably less annoying. Now to find someone willing to try a weld as a permanent repair.

 

[greentruck]

Life slowed just enough to get this fixed. Searched for local options, although plenty of non-local services at big $$ no doubt. Everyone seems oriented toward alloys (refurbishing, etc) so look for some verbiage like "steel" and be sure you clearly identify that otherwise they may be clueless. I got lucky with a small local chain that does more than just tires. They managed to weld things tight from the inside without marring anything visible. It's holding 43 psi 8 hours later. Will keep an eye on it, but I'm pretty sure it's good. Took 45 minutes and $45.

 

[greentruck]

Well, this one gets deeper into the muck...

Discovered my right front tire was running low, then the left front, too, a few days later. Took it back to the same shop that welded the wheel and stopped my leak previously. Both of these wheels are now leaking!

Hmmm, anyone else with this issue?

Their take was it's an issue with this design of wheel. I know there were issues with rusting, etc back in the days of white spokers back in the 70s and 80s. Supposedly the moisture will set in the area where the weld is and eventually corrosion will cause a problem.

The truck is garaged and I can't say there's more than a tiny bit of surface rust on these OEM wheels. They are the front wheels, so possibly exposed a bit more to this than the rears. However, I've never heard of a previous issue with the 42601-60361 rims, so is this really a credible cause? I can understand a production error perhaps causing this, but rather suspect that Toyota tends to not build junk in general. Basically I'd like to figure out whether I should replace these wheels or go with something else. And what would something else be? I like my steel wheels, don't want solid discs because the handholes available with the 42601-60361 or similar wheel are handy when wrestling these big ol' 33s around, but not sure what direction I should go that's simple, cheap and reliable, which is what I thought I had here.

 

[bigredmachine]

I would just weld the pin holes and run them. nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain. Toyota has excellent build quality but at the end of the day you can still have some parts that arnt perfect