Old 09-16-05, 03:16 PM
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YamacrawJ
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 147

Bikes: Beauty: 2006 Surly Long Haul Trucker; The Beater: Timberlin Urban Express

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Last Sunday, I went out to jump onto my bike for a trip to the grocery store: flat front tire. "The Armadillos have failed already?!" (I have gotten new Armadillo All Condition tires [sick of flats] and new wheels in the last 3 weeks.) I got out my repair stand, pump, and otherwise used my street tools and started in on a hot afternoon on the front stoop. The 'dillos are all right. There's a hole in the tube that correlates with a roughish edge on a hole on the rim, on the side. I try filing it down. (And after the fact decided that the next time I have her torn apart, I'll wrap sandpaper around my finger and have a go.) If I had some extra rim tape, I would have covered up the holeS with that. (There are holes all the way around the rim, maybe 8" apart and each hole is about 2 mm diam.) Lacking that, I got out fabric Band-Aids and put in 3 or 4, trying to keep them from interfering with a good bead connection up by the edge of the rim. I covered up the roughest holeS that I found. I'm starting to understand why people get their own components and build up/repair their own bikes, and why, with every passing iteration, the components get more expensive.
Next Chapter: Today, I stopped by the LBS to talk over the new wheels. Repair Guy said that he liked my Band-Aid fix a lot. He popped off the tire and tube and had a look. He didn't take out any of my Band-Aids. He didn't get out a file or sandpaper. He started cutting lengths of electrical tape and covering other holes. He said he would have used duct tape if he had it. "Has fibers."
What do you all think of this fix? Should I still try filing down the edges of all of these holes next time I have the wheel torn apart? In the meantime, I'm rolling on Armadillos, Band-Aids, and electrical tape!

Last edited by YamacrawJ; 09-16-05 at 03:42 PM.
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