Originally Posted by
bikerjp
You guys obsess over every gram, buy $1000+ wheels and $100 carbon bottle cages but 5 bucks for a new tube and you cheap out and patch the crap out of it?
This comment makes lots of assumptions about those offering advice on this forum. I actually appreciate those who don't save old tubes. I can happily offer to take the punctured tube if they're not interested in keeping them (while on the road) and I get a free $5 to slip into my pocket. Thanks. They didn't want to carry it in home to discard it anyway. Bravo. Toss those old tubes, just ask those you're riding with first to make sure someone can't happily take it off your hands.
Those who have trouble with patch reliability are either impatient or simply doing it wrong. Tubes don't have to "support" any forces, because the tire and rimtape provides that support. ALL A TUBE HAS TO BE IS A SEALED MEMBRANE, nothing more. Properly applied patches put the tube right back into 100% functionality AND SAFETY, and will not be at risk of future failure, certainly not catastrophic failure. I think many people fail to understand this and worry about any possible risks. A 'failed patch job' would (at worst) result in the air leaking out of the tube at the exact same rate that it leaked out after the original puncture, and no faster. So if done correctly, ZERO additional risk. If done incorrectly or hastily, the 'failure' of a patched pinhole would create no more danger than that imposed by the original flat.
There is FAR more risk to catastrophic failure from a hastily or poorly inflated tire EVEN WITH A NEW TUBE. Tubes being accidentally pinched under the bead during a hasty roadside repair using a new (fully empty) tube and a CO2 inflator WILL in fact create the risk of a dangerous blowout.... And I would guess that plenty of people on this forum have done that before.
You may have guessed that I also don't have a specific patch limit. I patched 9-10 tubes just the other day and loaded two of them into my saddle bag for spares. If I have the time, I'll inflate them and quickly run them through a sink of water just to make sure there wasn't a second puncture that I missed. Sometimes I do this, sometimes not...and the results are the same either way...full faith in my "new" tubes.
-Jeremy