fixing flat with superglue
 

will it hold if its just a small pin hole ?

Are you talking about the tire or the tube or tubular?
If tire then yes. If tube I doubt it but haven't tried it.

Al

Assuing you're talking about an inntertube for a clincher system (by far the most common). Probably won't work. Because tubes are flexible rubber, and super glue dries hard and stiff.

yeah the tube for a clincher, just wondering cause i want a ride tomorow and im all out of repair kits so if you know a way to fix it, please post here :D

Do you have a bike shop near you? Buy a new tube - they're less than $5. If not, hardware stores sometimes have patch kits. Or rubber cement and strips of rubber (which is what patch kits basically are anyway).

On the Tufo North America web site there are posts that say it can be done with tubular clinchers, but I've never had any success. I've had limited success with Shoe Goo on tubular clinchers, especially if no sealant has been placed into the tire.

For a regular clincher, with butyl or latex inner tubes, a patch is the most practical other than complete replacement of the inner tube.

hey, new tubes are like $3. at performance. come on even i am not that frugal!

I've done it with tiny holes in the tube and it works pretty good, but if it gets wet there's a chance for a failure.

I have a friend who takes old tubes and cuts them into small pieces and uses them with super glue to make his own patches. I haven't tried this so I don't know how well they will hold up.

Glue does not work as a "filler" material... this goes for rubber cement and superglue as well. You can't just fill up a hole with glue and expect it to hold. I've tried to patch TIRE casing by filling the hole with a bunch of rubber cement, but it doesn't work well at all. To patch a tube, you need a piece of rubber to cover the hole. Also, you should use Rubber Cement rather than Superglue to join the patch to the tube, since Rubber Cement is designed specifically for this kind of repair and forms a very strong airtight bond.

A new tube is only $5 at most LBSes, and a patch kit with 5-8 patches is usually only $3 or so. Do the job right! There's nothing more frustrating than trying to patch a tube with some improvised method, then having it fail and leak a few hours later. Trust me, I speak from experience :D

And I've had bad experiences even with the "stick-on" patches that you can get at bike shops. I have never had one of these patches hold (on high-pressure road tires) for more than a day. Get a real (traditional) patch kit, or just a new tube.

I've seen a couple friends do that where they take an old, heavily patched tube, carve it up, and use rubber cement for patches, or use parts of the tube as rubber bands (like how one recent issue of a bike rag showed how to make a ghetto parking brake by using a part of a bike tube to clutch a brake lever.) I don't know how well the system works compared to patches though, but I give them a +1 for recycling.

In a pinch I've patched several tubes with contact cement and patches made from an old tube. It's not real easy to get a good seal, but when you do it holds well.

Agreed. Some people apparently have the "magic touch" to make stick-on patches work, but I sure as heck don't. A regular glue-on patch only takes an extra minute or so to dry the glue (less if you blow air on it!), and they are very reliable.

Pinholes have a habit of quadrupling in size or more when inflated. As has been pointed out, superglue is not a filler and is non-flexible and the rubber will pull away from the blob of it sooner or later leaving you back where you are. You could get away for a while with supergluing a rubber patch over it... but you're out of patches.

Just go to Wal-Mart, some other big box store, service station or hardware shop (surely you *can* walk to one of those in your town) and buy a repair kit. And let this be a lesson -- always restock your patch kit when you fix punctures.

At least no-one suggested using duct tape...

Tried it! Makes a sticky non-airtight mess. I've also tried using a piece of electrical tape instead of a patch, with rubber cement. Makes an even stickier mess. Every time I place a Nashbar/PB order, I pad my order with patch kits up to however much I need to get the discount :p

I fixed a friend's UST tubeless tire with super glue once. I put a drop or two of glue on the outside of the tire, on and around the puncture, and it held fine (and believe me, this particular friend would have let me know about it if it had leaked later). We were in a hurry to get to the trailhead, and I figured the super glue was worth a try.........But this tire was usually run at 30-35 psi, and it was a tire, not a tube. I agree with everyone else, for repairing a tube, it's not a good idea and it probably wouldn't work.........And FWIW, for tubeless tires, Stan's sealant or something similar (which my friend was not using) is the way to go; I've never had a flat when using the stuff-

They work perfectly fine (the park GP-2's that is). I've been riding on a patched tube with one of these for the last thousand km's and it's as solid as a "real" patch. These are 23c tires inflated to 110-130psi.

You really should try them again (park GP-2 once again), on a busted tube. The key to those instant patches it hat the tube MUST be inflated a small amount and like "real" patches the surface needs to be clean.

The advantages of these patches are awesome once you can use them effectively. You don't have to wait for glue to dry and you don't have to mess with anything and it's fast.

Are those glueless patches called Skabs or something like that? I see some type of glueless patch offered here called that, but I have no clue if its any good or not.

Here in Texas, especially in the over 100 degree (Farenheit, 40 degrees C for others) heat, a lot of glueless patch jobs just melt off, while the old glued with rubber cement patches stay on because of a stronger chemical bond.

I have patched with electrical tape before, without glue. Worked OK on a low pressure mountain bike tire as long as the hole in on the outside and the tire can hold the tape in place. Doesn't work on high pressure though.

I also pad out my nashbar orders with patch kits. The glueless patches are worthless IMHO.

Well... dunno if I'll ever give the glueless patches a try again. The Park ones may indeed be better. What I've used are the X-mart kind.

The thing is, for me the main aggravation of a flat is not patching the tube, which is the easy part. It's removing the wheel, getting the tire off, finding the flat, replacing the tire, pumping it up, putting the wheel back on, and cleaning off my hands :) If using rubber cement makes my patches fail even 10% less, I consider that to be well worth it. Plus, what I do now is carry a spare tube and just bring punctured tubes home to patch later, so convenience of the patch isn't a major issue...

I agree that the advantages are great, but I also recently bought a new GP-2 set, figuring that Park may have improved the adhesive, and they blew through in short order (less than a day, most less than an hour). What's the secret to the magic touch?

Btw, my estimation of the value is similar to how moxfyre calculates it. Even if some glueless patches will last for thousands of miles (basically permanently), others won't, at least in my experience. I've actually only had a tire puncture on me once while riding my good bike. Partly b/c I usually run kevlar-belted tires.

What tires do you ride? I thought kevlar-belted tires would solve all my problems, but they haven't :( I started using lightweight 28 mm IRO Duro kevlar tires on my touring bike, and got even MORE flats than before. The weird thing is that on my "good" road bike I use cheap Performance 25 mm tires (no kevlar) and have NEVER had a flat.

I have now switched to 32 mm Panaracer Urban Max tires which have a noticeably THICKER rubber layer than the IRO Duro tires... Only 50 miles on them so far, but they seem very good. Semi-slick tread, quiet, and not squirmy at all despite being a bit wide for my rims.

+1!
The trick with electric tape is to clean the tube WELL before taping. Use rubbing alcohol if you have some. And burnish the tape really well. I use the smooth rounded end of a screwdriver handle. Clean that with the alcohol PRIOR to burnishing as well. Gets any grease off that might compromise the tape. And use a couple of pieces of tape crisscrossed.

I can't think of any situation where I'd have rubbing alcohol, electrical tape, and a screwdriver handy... but won't have any access to a proper patch kit :p Honestly, why try such a trick when the proper solution is so cheap and effective? I can see using a bit of electrical tape on the trail in a pinch, but then I'd be in a hurry to replace it soon as I got home...