Originally Posted by
dscheidt
I've used regular rubber cement, and had failures. The patches creeped off the hole. That was on skinny tubes, in fairly high pressure road tires. That never, ever, ever happens with vulcanizing fluid. I keep a jar of fluid, which I buy from the auto parts store, at work and home, and use that when patching. It's about six bucks a can, which if you can screw the top on, will last a couple years of occasional use, or a few hundred patches if you're busy. (plain rubber cement costs $3 for a bottle that's half the size, so it's not any cheaper. Might have some somewhere, of course which would get you home, but it won't save you much money.)
My "Elmer's" cement is used on 700-23 tires and tubes run at 105-120 psi so high pressure isn't necessarily a cause of failures. Also, yes Elmers comes in 4-oz bottles at about $2 each but it serves several purposes other than tube patching so its cost compared to vulcanizing cement isn't the issue. We use it up before it dries out.