Punctures - How Do You Prevent Em?
It’s the bane of anyone who rides a bike. You get your trusty steed out, ready to set off to wherever, only to notice that you’ve got a flat. Or everything’s going beautifully with your trip, when you hear that dreaded hisssss, and the handling suddenly goes all weird.
Punctures. Bah! You can probably guess that I had one today.
I’m of the opinion that prevention is better than cure. Admittedly, there are probably some (like that one above!) that you can’t really prevent. But those annoying tiny splinter of glass ones. How do you prevent them?
For the last couple of years I’ve used Slime in the tyres of my Sturdy Commuting Bike. Basically you take the valve to pieces (full instructions & a little tool come with the bottle), and squirt in half a bottle of this gunk. Put the valve back together, and re-inflate the tyre. The idea is that if you get a puncture, the slime leaks into the hole, and seals it - according to the manufacturers, it’s good for up to an 1/8″ puncture.
It’s good stuff, but not totally successful. On a commuting bike, where you probably don’t want to have to bother repairing a flat while you’re on your way into the office it’s great. You know you’ve got a puncture, but you can carry on riding for a good distance. I’ve actually just done about 150 miles with a puncture, just re-inflating every 30 miles or so. Hey - it’s been too damned cold to fix it!
Then there are tyre liners - strips of tough material that you put inside the tyre between the inner tube and the tyre itself. I’ve never used these, but . . .
. . . when I was in the bike shop last Wednesday, the assistant commented on my tyre that was gently spitting slime. He said that he didn’t use the stuff, but preferred to use an old inner tube as a tyre liner. Basically, cut the valve off and carefully fit it inside the tyre like one of those liners you can buy. He then went on to tell me all sorts of crazy bike jumps & tricks that he does, now without punctures.
S
o that’s what I did today. Used the old inner tube as a liner, not crazy jumps and stunts.
There are also the tyres to consider though. Tyres like Schwelbe’s Marathon Plus (recommended by pretty much everyone, including round-the-world record holders it seems) include materials designed either to deflect sharp objects, or just give then too far to travel before they hit the inner tube.
As the Cycling Plus review on Wiggle.co.uk said of these: “Almost impregnable”. Sounds impressive, but there’s plenty of life left in my Sturdy Commuting Bike’s tyres, and I’m too tight to throw away a perfectly serviceable pair!
So how do you prevent punctures?
Continental Ultra Gator Duraskins. 3000 puncture-free road miles and counting…
maxxis re-fuse tires are cheap & super-tough for road tires. However, any tire will flat if you run over screws like in your photo.
About 11 years ago I was having punctures every day during hedge trimming season. I bought some plastic tape from Halfords to go between inner and outer in the manner you describe with old inner tubes. I had one puncture since then: last month, and that was because the tape had gradually moved to the side. I’m still using one Halfords inner tube I put in 11 years ago.
When these outer tyres finally die I’ll probably get marathons though.
If you want to use your current tyres to the death, tyre liners are a good bet. The lads in my LBS use cheapo tyres with tyre liners in preference to riding Marathon +.
Other things - check your tyres - quite often, especially with Kevlar belted tyres, you can catch the nasties before they work their way right into the tyre.
I’d recommend the Panaracer Ribmo tyres, check out the link for stats http://tinyurl.com/d6o4ys Fit and forget
For me, it’s been dependent upon location. Living out in the deserts of the US West, thorns and stickers were a pain. I just got used to swapping tubes sometimes three times a ride. But I got quick at it.
My Pashley came with Schwelbe’s Marathon Plus as standard equipment. I’ve never got a flat.
I wrote about this a few months back.
I’ve tried every possible anti-puncture measure and now believe that the only really good one is very good tyres. The Marathons are good, but I find they don’t grip the road. However, I have had very good luck with Vredestein tyres.
The only tyre liner that I found didn’t eventually cause a puncture itself is the Panaracer Flat-Away. I still have those on some of my bikes.
Dutch Perfect make some bold claims, but I’ve not tried their tyres.
As for slime… don’t talk to me about slime… That caused the worst leaks that I’ve ever had. It slowly eats your tube from the inside, and especially attacks the glue of any patches that you might have managed to fit to tubes which have punctured worse than slime can fix. It does this on downhills when your rims are heating up. Finding that your spare also contains the stuff and causes the same problem on the next downhill is not funny at all. This caused much hassle during the second day of my lejog in hilly Cornwall, Devon and west Somerset until I bought new tubes.
Thanks for all the input from all of you. John the Monkey’s recommendation that you check your tyres regularly is spot on. Sometimes you can’t help riding through broken glass on the road - if you do, stop straight after, and check your tyres thoroughly. Just before last year’s Dunwich Dynamo, I checked my tyres & pulled out a shard of glass that I’m sure would have worked it’s way in over the next 120 miles that night.
One thing I should have mentioned in the post is that the best way to avoid punctures is to avoid routes that tend to have broken glass, thorn bush trimmings, stone splinters, etc. on them. Sadly, this could mean avoiding many designated cycle routes in the UK - they’re often nice secluded routes that people find perfect for swigging from alcopop bottles, which are then ceremoniously smashed on the path. Bah - kids today!
Here are links to the ubiquitous wiggle.co.uk for each of the tyres you’ve mentioned. If you’re not in the UK, and want to post the equivalent for your local supplier, please feel free to do so. Having lots of links, your comment will get mopped up for a while by the sp^m filter, but I’ll approve it so that it shows.
Steve Rumsby’s Continental Ultra Gator Duraskins
Big Dave’s Re-Fuse tyres aren’t listed, but here’s the page for the Maxxis tyres Wiggle do sell
Andy in Germany recommends tyre liners
D Robinson’s Panaracer Rimbos aren’t listed on Wiggle, but here’s their Panaracer products’ page
Buying a whole new bike, like Kevin’s Pashley (not available from Wiggle - this link’s for Evans) might be taking things a bit far to avoid a puncture! So the Marathon Plus tyres are here.
David Hembrow recommended the Panaracer Flataway tyre liner, but I can’t find retailers in the UK selling the Dutch Perfect tyres. Shame - ‘cos the testing picture on their web site is pretty confidence-inspiring!
Update: National Cycles sell the Dutch Perfect Tyres.
I don’t have much experience but I use Continental Ultra Gators too. I like them a lot but HAVE had 2 punctures. Annoyingly these have both been on really short trips: one pushing my bike up the garden path, the other on a sub-2-mile errand. So my advice based on my own experience and empirical evidence is…
“don’t go on short rides!!!!”
I didn’t buy a Pashley just to get a set of tyres. It is just a lovely bike, totally suited for Toronto’s streets. It is the bike that I’ll ride every day for the rest of my life.
It is the Pashley Sovereign Roadster. There’s a photo of it here:
http://store.curbside.on.ca/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_109_114&products_id=131
Kevin - I was kidding! They really are just superb bikes!