Originally Posted by Ranger

Here is a disadvantage of Presta. I was at my Bro in Law's last weekend. He lives in a small town, 70 miles from his LBS. He just got his bike home from LBS where it was "serviced." New presta tubes were put in.

He has a $2,000 Specialized bike that he never rides but he got it serviced because i was coming to ride so he offered to ride with me. Well, guess what, the rear tube was flat a few hours after returning from the LBS.

So, now how do we air it up? Simple answer..........We can't. He thinks he had a special "attachment" at one time but can't find it. So here we sit with a flat tire. I offer to give him one of my Shrader tubes if he wants to drill out the hole. So he did and i put my shrader tube in it. If we hadn't drilled the rim out he wouldn't have gotten to ride.

He also would have had to make a 150 mile round trip to get what he needed to air it up or he would have had to wait and order it online. So i would say that one major negative to the Presta is that some day somewhere you will likely end up with no means to air up your tire. There is always an air chuck outfitted to blow up a schrader tube close by.