MMACH 5

Thursday evening, I noticed my MTB had a flat and I put on my spare tube, (which has several patches). The next morning the spare had gone flat, but I was in a hurry to leave for work, (on my other bike), so I aired it up just to keep it from sitting on the rim and pinching the tire.

My plan was to change out the tube after work.
I fully expected it to be flat by the time I got home. Strangely, it was still full. Even stranger, it is still full.

This is not a self-sealing tube with a Schrader valve.
Anyone ever had this experience?
Any idea what would cause a tube to STOP losing air?

pinkrobe

Maybe the valve was leaking air, and when you filled it up again, it got fixed. Weird...

ppc

It's probably the valve that's flaky. On my commuter bike, I had a tire once that was perfectly inflated in the morning, deflated completely at some time during the day (I checked it regularly, it would happen suddenly within an hour), and I had to reinflate the tire to get back home, and it stayed fine during the night. It did that for over a week, I was almost certain it was one of my coworkers who had the key to the bike cage who was deflating the tire on purpose, and I almost complained to my boss about it. Before raising a stink and starting to accuse people though, I changed the tube to make extra sure, and the problem went away. Go figure...

MMACH 5

I do have some extra valve cores in my tool chest. I'll change it out and see what happens.

Thanks.

DieselDan

Scharder valves can stick open and be worked back into place easily. I deal with this little problem with my rental beach bikes. I spray a little oil into the valve and push the valve plunger in to free it up and get it to seal again.