How long does it take you to fix a flat?
Originally Posted by
General Geoff
Having gotten two flats on my rear tire in a week's time, I've found it takes me about 20-25 minutes at a liesurely pace to:…
Originally Posted by
Ghazmh
It seems like most of my flats are in pouring rain or when it’s 42 degrees and raining. It’s basically a race for me. I prefer to replace the tube and patch it at home. Say 10ish minutes.
Originally Posted by
caloso
My experience is that the first flat gets a new tube and CO2. This will be less than 5 minutes. I prefer not to patch a tube on the side of the road if I can avoid it. The second and subsequent flats get a patch and pump.
At this point, I'm probably late anyway.
I carry
two new tubes on a long ride, and I never seem to get around to patching flats though I do carry a patch kit for the worst circumstances.
As a year-round cycle commuter, time to fix is often critical, especially in the Winter.
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
Emergency Winter Cycling Kit?
I too ride on urban / suburban routes with similar measures, but early, before 6 AM. I envision going to an indoor ATM machine to fix a flat, so I carry a bank card too.
And…
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
I have on occasion had nightmares about ABSOLUTELY needing to be at work at 7:30 AM, and being nowhere near there.
Rarely in reality I have found myself in that situation, but had more leeway than in my nightmares....
I also employ this preventative measure,to hopefully forestall flats,
especially because as @FlMTNdude
noted
Originally Posted by
FlMTNdude
Most of my flats are radial tire wire...
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
…PS: I also use Kevlar tire liners year round, even on my fair weather carbon fiber road bike,
So replacing the floppy tire liner after a repair adds a few minutes.
BTW, just a few minutes ago I posted about living through a flat-tire horror story:
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
I just posted this PM yesterday about
our cross-country tour on Merciers with fully loaded panniers in 1977:..
Back in' 72, I think it was a pretty high quality bike, costing ~$250 at that time, but we did not get a top of the line model, i.e. not Campagnolo equipped.
They did have sew-up tires and we actually used the bikes for touring pretty well in Michigan and Ontario.
We then used them to ride cross country and
the sew up tires we're the worst part of the trip due to an excessive number of flats, the difficulty of repair, and the need to take a couple days off to find a city with a shop that sold them, but we made it.
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
…When we did our cross-country honeymoon, we brought six spare tires. It seemed we would get a flat tire about every three days, just as the sticky glue-grime wore off our hands.
Twice on the tour we had to ditch the bikes in a motel and hitchhike to a city to buy more tires (in Flagstaff, AZ and Pueblo, CO), losing two otherwise rest days, plus all the delays and time expended fixing flats.
We switched wheels soon after arriving in Boston.
Back in '77 it was a lot harder to get good information--no Internet!