Bike Forums - View Single Post - WTF are you guys using for tires and WTF am I doing wrong?! (LONG)

03-24-10 | 06:20 AM

#21

bautieri

Downtown Spanky Brown

Joined: May 2007

Posts: 2,108

Likes: 0

From: Enola, Pennsyltucky

Bikes: Motobecane Phantom Cross Pro Kona Lana'I

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPFITNESS

i used to ride and fix bikes all the time as a kid so fixing a tube is no problem.

For you it must be

I keed, I keed.

Seriously, you're fine on the 28s. Tires can be a bit finicky so I'll offer up a couple of tips. One thing you have not told us is where the flats are occurring. Are they rim side (on the top of the tube), side walls, or on the bottoms? Sometimes you just get a crappy tube that leaks air through no fault of your own. Now if the flat is rim side, then your rim tape has slid over (it happens) and the tube is cutting itself on the holes your spokes attach to. Buy a good cloth tape and ditch the tube. I've never successfully patched a rim side torn tube. A hole on the side wall is from a pinch flat. Basically you hit something like a pothole, grate etc. and your tire compressed under your weight allowing your rim to come down and pinch your tube. This happens when you don't have enough air in your tires. Seeing how you are using a frame pump all the time (because you must hate yourself

) I suspect your tires are greatly under-inflated. The air compressor at the gas station likly isn't accurate either so swing by the LBS and pick up a nice floor pump. You can get a good one for about 50 bucks. If the hole is in the bottom of the tube then you had a puncture. Easy to patch but can be a real pain to find the culprit sometimes. Run your fingers along the inside of the tire to find the offending object, the remove it. If you can't find the little devil then pull apart a cotton ball so it's nice and fluffy. Then gently brush it along the inside of the tire. The cotton fibers will snag on whatever caused the flat.

Hope this helps, don't give up on the biking because the flat tire gnomes are picking on you. I once had a nasty case of flat tire gnomes that were plaguing me on my trainer of all things.

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