small hole in tire cause tube to pop?
09-16-05, 10:51 AM
#1
Mettle to the Pedals
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small hole in tire cause tube to pop?
Hi folks....Is it reasonable to assume that if you have a very small hole in the sidewall of a road bike's tire that the tubes will rupture and leak through that hole?
09-16-05, 11:30 AM
#3
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heh... heh... this reminds me of a ride we did through "the **** loop"; a 75-80mile ride. So my buddy Nate gets a flat about 1/3rd of the way through, so we patch it and go on. About 1/2 way through, POP! it flats again. We took a closer look and found a tiny hole in the tyre. Hmm... didn't bring a boot.... Being poor college students, we had brought along TopRamen for food... chewing away at it thinking.... AHAH!!! We'll patch the tube, patch the tyre on the inside as well, then we threw in the foil seasoning-pack on top of that... and then we decided to lay the TopRamen wrapper on top of that as well! I hate flats!!! 
09-16-05, 12:46 PM
#4
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Yup. Sure can. Happened to me on my tour this summer up the Maine coast. Something put a small slash in the sidewall of my flatproof tire 
. We were just settling in for the night when we heard a loud *BANG!*. Scary. Since we too are poor college students, it hurt to use a one-dollar bill as a boot, but it was all we had. Hey, it worked. I used it for a couple months, later switched to a granola bar wrapper, which I am still using today.
Anyway, it doesn't take a big hole for the tube to bulge through and eventually burst, especially with a high-pressure tire.
. We were just settling in for the night when we heard a loud *BANG!*. Scary. Since we too are poor college students, it hurt to use a one-dollar bill as a boot, but it was all we had. Hey, it worked. I used it for a couple months, later switched to a granola bar wrapper, which I am still using today.Anyway, it doesn't take a big hole for the tube to bulge through and eventually burst, especially with a high-pressure tire.
09-16-05, 04:56 PM
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Yeah, you are describing my last flat. I fixed the flat and rode about three miles to our lunch stop. After lunch I took another look at my flat tire and found a tiny bubble of inner tube extruded through the sidewall of the tire. I popped the tire off again and booted it with a piece of duck tape that I had thoughtfully carried in my flat tire kit and all was good after that.
09-16-05, 05:11 PM
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I scraped the side of a rock with the sidewall once and did not notice a tear in the dark. I came home and fell asleep watching TV in my chair with the bike in a bike stand a few feet from my head. It exploded like a gun about three in the morning. It was so loud my kids came down from upstairs to see if I was shot. The cat is still not the same.
09-16-05, 07:43 PM
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That's what I suspected. Thanks!
09-16-05, 08:09 PM
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If you can see that there is a hole in the tire no matter how small, you shoudl boot it in some way. I have found that by cementing the sqare of aluminum foil that covers the patch to the inside of the tire and covering this with any cloth tape make a very good permanent boot. Dirt will eventially work through any patch, but the foil makes a good barrier to that.
