OSHA approved sandals ;)

-Kurt

Yes, it is a piston, probably from a 250 Honda.
These patches almost never fail even when they just use a piece of old inner tube.
I can get 2 square centimeters of this patching for $.50
The press is about $5

I don’t get it - what is the heat source in the photo?

Whatever burns long enough: scrap cardboard, bits of wood maybe too quickly goes out, so maybe a few chunks of charcoal (?)

Would that fit in a jersey pocket?

I’m fascinated by this heat process. Do they use glue or just two pieces of butyl tube and heat & pressure? Both?

Inquiring minds want to know!

The heat is either alcohol or diesel fuel, the patching is heat vulcanized rubber patching or just a piece of old tube.
No glue, just heat and pressure preferably with vulcanizing patches.

Cool!

I was in India in the late 60's. I was in HS during that time. We went down to visit the Taj Mahal from New Delhi. Our car was a 1966 Plymouth Satellite with a 360. Tires were purchased through the Embassy Commissary, Firestones. They fell apart on the roads we had to drive on. In the two weeks we traveled, we had 7 flat tires. They were tubeless tires that eventually had to have tubes put in. Vulcanizing kits were kept in the car to repair tubes.

Being the young teenager, I had to fix all of them. This involved breaking the bead on the rim by using the jack base that had a curve specifically for that task. How you ask? Pretend to jack the car up with the base on the bead under the edge of the rim. Use a hand sledge (5#) to beat on the tire on either side to get it to slide off.

We also had a hose with a special connector that connected to the engine by replacing a spark plug. Turn the engine on and let it fill the tire. Getting the bead to seat was a real pain. One way was to put a line around the center of the tire and tighten it up to get the sidewalls to bulge against the rim bead. Soapy water was very helpful. Watch for the bubble's and try to seal them up with manipulating the tire on the rim.

We stopped going to tire repair places the first time we did. They used a BFH and screw driver to try to break the bead seat. Tires were fragile enough without undue trauma!

Wished I had known about the starter fluid and lighter approach to seat the beads!

The most important part of patching a tube is scuffing and scuffing and scuffing the site to be patched. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of proper, full scuffing of the site to be patched.

I wonder if the patcher properly scuffed the site to be patched before patching it with that arcane, archaic monstrosity?

What happens if both sidewalls of the tube get welded together? I suspect that can't happen because the insides of the tube were not scuffed! :)

It's not kind to make a judgement call on this stuff when it keeps people moving in other societies that work vastly differently than your own. There's no "monstrosity" in the method when it's reliable and repeatable.

Granted, I share your curiosity as to how it doesn't bond the two sides together.

-Kurt

When I was a kid, we always patched our tubes by lighting the glue on fire. Always. Light it. Let it burn for a second our two - just to heat up the rubber - then apply the patch. I do not remember ever having a patch fail that way. Bicycle innertubes didn't exactly grow on trees in my neck of the woods in Maine back then, so we'd be riding patched tubes forever. I never heard of doing it any other way until I was a teen and started working in bike shops when our family moved to the mainland.

I think lighting the glue doesn't hurt or help. It might ensure that the glue is dry.

That's one of my oldest memories of my dad. Squatting together on the garage floor setting fire to that diamond shaped tray. Fixing a flat on my too big Hawthorn Ballooner. Probably 1966.

Kurt, apparently, my post has you all scuffed up.

Consider, however, that you may have entirely missed the tongue-in-cheek humor intended for and directed at THIS audience.

At the same time, the need to scuff, scuff, scuff before applying the patch, is apparently a lesson some here really need (see other thread about how people hate patching tubes).

Learning that it is almost impossible to over-scuff is why my patches never fail. If you can see ANY of the original surface, you have not yet scuffed enough (also true for almost all bonding operations).

Semi-related....
Is it possible to patch a tube when the leak is at the base of the valve stem? Like the stem is separating from the tube?

I've done it, but I think I got lucky. IMHO, if the valve is separated from the rubber, you're s-o-l.

So the tubes are coated to some degree with talc like powder and/or lube/preservative that is the opposite of glue and stops it from doing it's job by creating a barrier that is not eliminated by scuffing.

You can clean with glass cleaner or light solvent used very sparingly, just scrubbing the area at all before scuffing can help, the residue is the plague. ;)

FWIW I haven't had a patch failure when 1) Use a Rema patch kit 2) really really really scuff the tire 3) let the glue really dry 4) don't lose where the puncture was :)

I use a pen and make a circle around the hole, and then I put a cross over it, too, so it's like an X'd out O. That helps me keep track of where it is.

:thumb: Patience and diligence are key as with many things, always in a hurry will get you doing it again. ;)

I'll preface by admitting I have some Scottish genes...
with that our of the way, FYI, I have salvaged several otherwise good tubes but with the valve stem separated from the tube rubber, or a crack/puncture in the rubber so close to the stem that it is impossible to patch. My salvage procedure is to splice in a rectangular cutout of a tube with an intact section around the stem, taken from a tube that has suffered a catastrophic failure beyond patching, or is otherwise scrap, e.g. due to excessive punctures/patches.

My dad had one of those Monkey Grip dealies. We used it to patch our motorcycle tubes.

Worked well and was fun to boot!