Rhinotire Instant Tire Sealant

Getting a flat tire in an automobile is aggravating enough. But on motorcycles, flat tires are a lot scarier, more troublesome to repair and can easily lead to serious harm for the motorcycle's operator. No wonder riders dread them so much.

Rhino Tire, a New York-based company, with a distributor in Singapore is out to assuage those fears with a patented 'Rhinotire' tire treatment claimed to seal punctures immediately after they occur. The treatment involves a special adhesive polymer gel that is first sprayed and then baked on all around the inner circumference of the tire. The gel remains tacky after application so it can migrate into and seal any puncture holes.

Rhino Tire will either sell you brand-new tires of most popular brands and sizes that have already been treated or apply the gel to your tires.

A video released by Rhino Tire in which a Honda CBR1000RR is repeatedly ridden over a nail-infested wooden plant and shows no apparent air leakage afterward.

Our own testing was not so positive. Spraying soapy water on the tread of both tires after our own test, after two runs over the nails and screws revealed more than a dozen leaking holes in the front tire and about 6 punctures in the rear tire. Thinking that perhaps a little time and tire heat were needed for the gel to flow, we rode the motorcycle a few kilometers around the neighborhood and checked again; still just as many bubbling holes. So we reset the pressures in both tires, parked the motorcycle in the back of our garage overnight and checked the pressure again in the morning. The front tire had lost 28 psi and the rear 14, and both still had just about as many leaking holes.

We reset the pressure again and rode the motorcycle hard for about 40 kilometers, including full-throttle acceleration, speeds approaching 160km/h and braking at the limit. Immediately afterward, more than half the punctures were still leaking but the others had apparently sealed...

While this showed that Rhinotire does not, as the company claims, 'automatically' seal out any possibility of air leakage, there is value in this technology nonetheless. Had we subjected untreated tires to as many punctures, they would have deflated immediately. And multiple punctures like ours rarely, if ever, occur; if a tire were to get the usual single puncture, Rhinotire would allow you to continue riding for many kilometers. Even if the tire eventually became too deflated for safe riding while you were in an isolated area, you could re-inflate it with CO2 cartridges or any other air source and continue on a lot farther. That alone could make the expense of Rhinotire a worthwhile, confidence-boosting expenditure. Just don't expect it to ignore a puncture altogether.