Originally Posted by
David Bierbaum
Sigh. Not what I want to hear!
The tedium of that meticulous search puts me to sleep just reading it! And with my luck, I'll find the wire when it rips through the pad of my finger... How thick are these wires anyhow? compared to, say, a copper strand from an extension cord?
There is a short cut for checking your tires.
Everytime that you install a tire on your rim, take the time to align the tire level with the valve stem. If you do that, after you find the puncture in the tube, all that you have to do is to align the tube with your tire and you'll know where in the tire to look. Actually, I usually have two places on the tire to look bacause I forget which way I had the tube oriented inside the tire.
At least half of the time whatever caused the puncture pulls back out of the tire so you never find it. My practice is to just make a cursery check on the roadside and only do the inside-out tire check if I have a second puncture in the same place. That's what happened to me with the second puncture that I reported in this thread.
I only carry one spare inner tube of each size on my bike but I had a patch kit with me. As long as I had the patch kit out I decided to do both inner tubes and rebuild my inventory for the ride back home.