Flat Tires are an Inevitability
Explorers in the new world, history would have it, spent years questing for the fabled Cibola, a city whose streets were said to have been paved with gold. They never found it. If those same explorers were to come to the city where I used to live (Houston), they might think the streets were paved with diamonds because of their sparkle in the rays of the morning sun. The glitter isn't diamond-studded pavement, though: it's acres of broken glass, the legacy of a city that owns no street sweepers and depends on torrential rains to wash debris from the local roadways.
 |
| Don't ever hit the road without 1) a tire pump, 2) a replacement tube and 3) tire levers. |
The glass-sprinkled pavement means little to motor vehicles, but cyclists soon learn to avoid the sparkly spots and almost as quickly learn how to change flats in near-record time (I can replace a tube in less than five minutes...). Only a rank amateur hits the local streets without carrying the equipment needed to change a flat: tire levers, a pump and a replacement tube. Once you’re back on the road, however, what do you do with that leaky tube?
Your local bike shop will tell you to throw away punctured tubes and replace them with new ones. Of course they will – it’s no different from your local quick-oil change joint telling you to ignore the owner’s manual in your car and come back for your next oil change in 3,000 miles. Both of them make a profit off your following their suggestions. At about seven dollars apiece, I would have spent something like $280 on replacement tubes for the three family bikes over the past year or so if I had paid attention to salesclerks at bike shops. I patch my tubes instead, tossing them after three or four patches or when a hole is too big.
The Low Down and Dirty on Common Tire Patch Kits
Patching a tube is easy, but you'll need quality patches. Here’s my take on four different widely-available patch kits:
Slime SKABS
| Like everything else from the company, their patches are a bilious green. Six round, glueless patches an inch in diameter come in a little dispenser, along with a scuffer to roughen the tube and a tiny instruction sheet. The dispenser looks an awful lot like one of those little boxes of Listerine breath strips, so be careful not to glue a patch to your tongue. These patches are super lightweight and fairly easy to apply. When on the tube, the green color makes them easy to spot. They have their problems, however: first, the metal roughening scuffer gouges the rubber inner tube like a cheese grater. Second, the patches leak. I’ve use three or four of them on road bike tires and have yet to have one hold air overnight. I recommend Skabs only if you intend to toss the tube when you get home; otherwise you’ve wasted a tube that could have been patched with something more lasting. |
  |
Park Tool GP-2 Super Patch
| The tiny plastic box holds six square patches about an inch on a side and a small square of emery paper. The whole kit weighs a lot less than an ounce.
Just clean the area around the hole with water or a little spit, roughen the area with the sandpaper, and apply one of the peel-and-stick patches. I’ve gone through two or three boxes of these and have only had one patch fail; mainly because I got another puncture in the same place. They do leak a little, but will hold for several days without losing more than a few PSI. A minor complaint: since the patches are clear, they’re hard to see on a tube. Otherwise, great to carry for emergencies. |
  |
Novara Patch Kit
On the downside, the little bit of fluid often dries out within a few months of being opened. You can’t substitute rubber cement for it, either. I keep one of these in the kitchen and one in the garage.
Rema TT02 Standard Patch Kit
| Rema kits are the Cadillac of vulcanizing patch kits. A touring kit contains half a dozen round patches and two rectangular patches suitable for slits instead of punctures. Rema includes a tube of vulcanizing fluid and emery paper for roughening the rubber of the tube, which (perhaps counterintuitively) improves the “grip” of the vulcanizing process. I have tubes that are a decade old on a rarely-used hybrid, and the Rema patches still hold. Definitely worth the extra dollar or two! You can't go wrong with one of these tubes, as long as you follow the directions. |   |
| I always carry some of the glueless patches (Park Super Patches or Slime Skabs) with me in case I have more than one flat on a ride (that's happened way too many times). I prefer to use a vulcanizing patch on the puncture once I get the tube home instead of applying a patch on the roadside, though, especially if I’m stuck with those Skabs glueless patches. |
copyright © 2016-2017 scmrak
No comments:
Post a Comment