aljohn

I've always used glue to stick tubs on in the distant past, but when I bought my Somec and it came with tubs I was advised to use tub tape. This I did but when I ripped the old tyre off the tape came with it !
Is this normal? I hope not, I don't want to carry spare tape with me. I might go back to glue, that always worked in the past.... I'd appreciate your thoughts - no, not that one!)
Albert

DiabloScott

Tape is for people who don't like glue.

Who "advised" tape? Did your bike come with Tufo tires?

aljohn

The local bike shop that sold tubular tyres. They sold glue as well but said tape had pretty well replaced the glue. What are Tufo tyres? I'm in England and never heard of them, but that means nothing !
Albert

DiabloScott

Tufo is a tire company that makes tubulars AND tape so I thought maybe you had Tufo tires and maybe Tufo was the one that recommended its own tape. I don't know much else about Tufo tires but maybe there's a reason they don't want you to use regular sew-up glue on them.

The other thing to be careful with is the rim manufacturer's recommendations if you have carbon fiber rims; sometimes they will say not to use a particular glue or not to use a particular kind of tape for whatever reason.

But if you have regular aluminum rims and regular tubular tires and you're comfortable with gluing them on yourself then there's no reason to stop now. There are other stories like yours where tape ruined the tires, the tape tifosi will tell other stories about how great it is and how terrible glue is... it's kind of a religious issue.

Why would a bike shop want to use tape? It's faster, requires less skill, and they can probably charge more... those are not necessarily bad reasons, but it's not true that tape has replaced glue; I'd guess less than 20% of tubular riders use tape.

JohnDThompson 

Tufo is a Czech company that manufactures tires (tubular and otherwise) as well as a double-sided tape to fasten tubulars to the rim.

Ex Pres 

I'm down to one LBS that stocks glue - the others are now solely tape sellers. I'm a glue man myself.

aljohn

Thanks for all the replies, I'm off to buy some glue.........
Albert

DannoXYZ 

For first-time gluing on new tyres, tape is a convenient solution. However, if you're re-gluing an old tyre or rim with previous traces of glue/tape, I'd stick with whatever was used previously (after scraping & cleaning off as much of the old glue/tape as possible).

aljohn

Dunno what I've done but a couple of my posts seem to have disappeared ! I've ordered some glue after reading your replies. On a related topic, I've also, for the first time, bought some self adhesive patches. This seemed a good idea at the time but now I wonder - how good are they? I don't want to finish repairing a puncture, sew the tub , then find I should have used a patch with glue.
I should have asked on the forum first - but I knew what I was doing, didn't I?
Albert

DannoXYZ 

Depends upon the tube material. A lot of hi-perf tubies have latex tubes, which requires a different kind of patch kit than butyl-rubber tubes.

Personally I have not had good luck with self-adhesive patches. They work fine, but aren't as permanent as I'd like. After a couple months, I can pull on them and they come off the tube cleanly. Regular patches with vulcanizing-fluid sticks better and can't be peeled off without A LOT of effort, which results in tearing the patch and/or tube.