punctures. tire liners, help-info needed please.
 

Hi guys, i ride a whistle miwok 1383d. I commute to work daily and do roughly 27 miles in total. Ive recently been getting alot of punctures which is very anoying, expensive & making me late for work! My bike originally come with fat nobbly tires but i bought schweble city jet tires which have an active kev guard..

ive been reading up on tire liners but what ive read its a toss up between mr tuffy & panaracer kevlar liners. Which are the best ones?

if anyone can help with my problem please id be very appreciative.

I will let others respond directly to your actual question. My input regards some issues you may be able to correct without the aid of liners.

First, the age of your tires. Are they still relatively new or somewhat worn. As tires wear out they are much more susceptible to punctures.

Also are any of these punctures repeats in the same place on the same tire and tube suggesting embedded road debris that you have not removed?

Finally are the punctures facing the road, the tire bead, or the spokes. Each type has one or more different standard causes. If facing the road, then the usual cause is road debris like stones, glass, tacks, etc. The liner would help with that. If facing the tire bead, then the usual cause is pinching due to under inflation (often seen as a double or snake-bite puncture). If facing the rim bed, there are several possible causes like protruding spokes, insufficient coverage of the spoke holes, etc.

Knowing which kinds of flats you are getting is important to choosing and applying a solution to the problem.

Thanks for reading and your post parker.

The tires are not even 3 months old. Still plenty of tread. Allways pumped up to max which is 85 psi.

the punctures are all facing the road, i had 3 in one week in my rear tire so i changed the tires around because i had 0 punctures in the front tire. After the change i had 2 punctures in 1 day in the rear. Im 6ft 3 & a heafty 17 1/2 stone, im not fat, just stocky and built as from gym & rugby..is my weight a contributing factor to the punctures?

no pinch flats up to now.

thanks steve

Steve, I don't what to tell you. Thorns maybe? Are you in a bike lane that doesn't get swept clean by cars? Sounds like some help from a liner might be in order.

Im either going to invest in some liners or get my self a new of stronger/thicker tires like armadilo tires or gator skin.

Thanks for your help chief

I like Mr. Tuffy. Don't get the light ones, just the regular.

I haven't tried the Panaracer, though.

In lieu of a bona-fide tire liner, many commuters tuck a flattened old tube into their tire before inserting a good inflated one.

Consider Thorn resistant tubes .. heavier because they have 4X as much rubber in them, but are molded to have most of it towards the road.

What would you think about putting 2 old tubes inside the rear tire ? Its only the rear i get punctures in. Obv remove the valve and all the air.. ya reckon 2 will fit ?

Ya gotta try it and find out for yaself. (I've never personally done the old tube trick, but many cyclists on the "Commuting" group swear by it. Yes, of course, remove the valves.)

Good idea.
The city jet tires look to be heavy/rugged and already have a kevlar layer of some sort. Have read too many stories of liners causing problems.
Would really help if you could figure out what is causing the flats.
Routine close inspection of the tire surface can help find stuff that has embedded itself into the rubber and which can be picked out before it gets further down.

All of my punctures happen on the go while im riding. My tires are checked after each ride. What sort of problems with the liners ?

The Schwalbe City Jet doesn't appear to be a particularly puncture resistant tire. It claims a puncture resistant breaker, but these days every tire claims that. I'd look for a tire that has more than just a thin aramid layer. Schwalbe's Marathon series and Specialized's Armadillos come to mind. Unfortunately, many of the really tough commuter tires are only available in 700c sizes.

Beware that the super tough tires are also a bit pricey. If you're on a tight budget, liners might help. Or you can just try to put more rubber between the road and the tube. The second tube trick and thorn resistant tubes attempt to do that. I run a cheap set of Cheng Shin C1218 26" tires on my MTB commuter. They're pretty awful in most respects, but at over a kilo per tire, they have enough rubber in the tread for two tires. In two years of commuting, I've had one puncture and that was a steel shaving big enough it might have flatted a car tire.

I have to chime in here about Armadillo's. Have been riding on them for nearly a year without a flat. Have plucked out goat head thorns and not heard the typical hiss.

They ride like Fred Flinstone's prehistoric granite tires though. They will rattle your bones, shake out your fillings, and cause blurry vision over the rough.

The ends of liners have been known to rub holes in tubes.
I've never used liners - some people swear by them and others swear at them.
Your tires are listed at over 500 grams, leading me to think that the rolling surface is pretty thick.

When you flat, do you find stuff in the tire, or just a hole? Do you know what you are rolling over that may be the culprits?
I generally use tires with a layer of kevlar and often find little bits of rock, glass, metal in a surface puncture that has not made it down through the tire and into the tube. If that stuff is picked out, a puncture is prevented.

One thing you must get used to doing is an inspection of the tires before or after a ride. You may catch a glass shard or piece of wire sticking up before it can do any damage. I haven't used liners for many years. I'm more careful and ( usually ) do the pre-ride tire inspection I described. If you wish to try some liners for likely no cost to you, when I was a kid and couldn't afford either liners or flat tires that needed to be patched, I used to get a couple of free used tires from the local bike shop of the proper size. I'd take a sharp pair of scissors and cut most of the sidewall off of the old tire. What was left was mostly just the worn out tread part of the tire. That was slipped into the bike tire so it was between the tube and the normal tire. Just make sure enough of the sidewall is cut away so nothing interferes with the tube. You just need a bit of a "cup" when you've cut the sidewall away. Never had a problem with too many punctures after that. It must have not caused any problems in handling because we left these "liners" in for a long period of time. This was 50+ years ago so cut me a little slack about the details. :)