I was talking a friend who owns a Jaguar XJ-R with chromed wheels last night. He said all four wheels leak air by about 15-20 PSI weekly, his service advisor told him that when chromed wheels get older, they do not maintain a tight seal with the tire's edge thus leak air. He has had all four tires removed and re-installed twice but the leakage is not cured.

Has anyone heard of this issue with chromed wheels? What is solution, de-chrome them, get new wheels? Any advice is appreciated.

Never heard of this, but nor have I ever had chrome wheels on any of my rides. If that is indeed true, couldn't one just remove the chrome from the inside tire bead surface?

Yeah, I've heard it happen as the chrome starts to peel/chip. If you can clean up the bead, you should be ok.

I did further search and this appears to be a known issue with Chrome wheels. The chroming process corrodes after a while, peels and the tire bead seal becomes defective thus resulting in air leakage.

As to my friend with the Jaguar, he is buying four OEM alloy wheels.

yep I bought a set of used chrome wheels with this problem

My local wheel shop used a grinder to remove the chrome off the bead and used some sealing compound,...no more problem

your friend with the jaguar should just go to a good tire/wheel shop instead of wasting money on new rims, it cost me $10 each to have them ground down

I just wanted to post a follow-up on this for anyone who is having the same problem, as this is the first thread that came up in my search.

In my case the tire dealer had verified it wasn't a tire issue, but I was loosing 10-15 psi a week.

As my particular wheel had some external chrome damage as well, and will probably get replaced in the near future, I didn't want to jump through hoops but also didn't want to have to continue to air up every week, so I tried something I found on another board: fix-a-flat. No, I wouldn't do that if I wanted a long term solution, but it worked great and after two months, I haven't had any issues!

any wheel shop can grind the chrome and reseal for a few bucks

this is an issue with chrome wheels.

the guy getting new wheels is getting ripped

I have chrome factory wheels. They don't bleed down anywhere closed to 10-15 psi a week. In fact, they seem to be no different than any other wheel that I've run. 1-2 psi per month adjustement if at all.

I had chromed rims on an e36 BMW and a Porsche 928.

The Porsche ones never leaked a bit.


But the BMW eventually left me as a junker due to those damn wheels leaking like sieves.

One tire or another was always going flat, so I took to having one of those cheapy 12V tire inflators that you plug into the cigarette lighter.

But after inflating 2 tires in a row the fuse would blow.

One day I ran out of fuses and still had a tire to fill. Using a paperclip seemed really clever, at least until the smoke started curling around the edges of the hood. When I opened the hood the rush of Oxygen made it recreate a scene from "Backdraft".

I squealed like a girl and slammed the hood shut. The fire went out but the damage was done. I drove around LA (in another car) trying to find someone to repair the fire damage. Never found anyone willing and my attempts were feeble. I eventually sold it as scrap to some Russian kid who came and dragged it out of the parking garage with some fun little dollies.

So when I got a 400e to replace the BMW and one of my friends suggested I get the rims chromed, I almost throttled him.

I wish I had had the tires removed and had the chrome ground off the bead area. I was rather ashamed of the fact that all 4 tires were full of Fix-a-Flat. Tire guys HATE you for using the stuff. It leaves a watering, sticky goo rolling around inside that MUST be removed if you want the tire balanced correctly.

Why the Porches rims never leaked I don't know. Maybe they had already been "fixed"?