Hello,

This is an almost brand new Schawlbe Marathon Supreme tire (2016 edition); it has less than 1000 km, bought in June.

I just noticed this sidewall bubble near a cut I got last month. It corresponds to a small hole in the sidewall. Can it be repaired?

If not its really frustrating; I also got a huge gash on a Marathon Green Guard tire I bought in April. Losing two supposedly puncture resistant Schwalbe tire in 2 months would suck real bad.

Boot it and be done with it.

Damn, do these things happen often? Dunno what happened this year but I never got so many flats and destroyed tires. I was lucky all those other years, or this year truly sucks?

Is that your tube sticking out of a hole in the sidewall? I would boot a cut on the tread part of the tire and use it on the rear. I would NOT boot a tear in the sidewall except to get home and only on the rear. Sometimes we just have a run of bad luck with tires, got to move on. Addendum: I read your post again and since that is an actual hole in the sidewall, no you cannot boot it. It is too close to the bead

Do you have any woven fiberglass tape? I have patched a tire sidewall with that tape by doing a multi layer repair inside the tire. It lasted the life of the tire.

Not a sidewall bubble but the tube coming through a break in the sidewall. Probably impact or sharp stone damage, NOT a tire defect. Sidewalls are not puncture resistant.

My dad tells the story that during WWII bicycle tires were extremely hard to come by due to the war effort. In his shop they used to boot tires all the time. For sidewall holes they would cut small round pieces of old tire, buff the rubber surface down to fresh rubber and glue it to cover the hole from the inside. He said it was not unusual to have half a dozen patches or boots on one tire just to keep a bike running.

Could a patch like the ParkTools TB-2 work for good?

I mean, could I boot the tire and just run with it until the tire wears through (its lifetime)? On the site it says that you patch on the road to save a ride; but need to replace the tire after; ASAP. Is that true?

A boot should hold a pretty long time no? Like (relatively) forever?

If you have the road swept free of debris , ahead of you , you should have very few tire issues ..

The TB2 is, I think, a temporary boot. If I was you I'd use a piece of old tire. I have also ridden tires for weeks with a duct tape boot made of several layers of folded tape. It probably will last for quite a while, but it is something of a risk. I would always make sure I had a spare tube and another boot handy when riding.

Dude, tube poking through, you can't leave it like that. It will expand until the tube starts hitting the frame, and 100 revolutions later, KABOOM. I did that a few times when I was a kid, learning how to maintain tires and tubes on the bmx bike I used for my paper route.

It's a small hole right now, and those are super spendy tires. If it's at all possible that the hole is a manufacturing defect, you should try to get it replaced under warranty. If not, you should at least try to patch the tire from the inside before you give up on it. I would look for the kind of patch they would use on the inside of a car tire, and hopefully it comes with appropriate glue. I am not confident that vulcanizing glue for patching tubes would be the right solution for the inside of a tire.

I'd boot it with an old tire, glue, and probably duct tape over top of the boot.

As mentioned above sidewalls are NOT puncture resistant.

Reducing the number of punctures you receive is half about buying different tires and half about avoiding things on the road.

A piece of Gorilla tape on the inside will fix that. You just need something with a fabric that will keep the tube from coming out the hole. I've used a clif bar wrapper in an emergency, its just a pain to keep it in the right place until the tube is inflated.

A boot will make the sidewall stiffer in that spot and you'll feel it on every revolution of the tire.