rhm

Beats me! Seems to me I had a flat in September that I neglected to post, but still... quite a run.

tashi

Last time I had a run of flats it was all my fault.

I trimmed about 1/4" - 1/2" off a cable, let the shards fall. Right onto the patio where I wheel my bikes out. Didn't clean it up.

6 flats I think until I figured it out? Some of the shards were just the right size to not be seen in the tire when inspecting it, but enough to poke the tube once pumped up and ridden a bit. Small tweezers were necessary.

noglider 

I'm riding more miles this year than in a long time, maybe 30 years. Yet I can't remember when I last got a flat. I guess some of that is attributable to the Vittoria Voyager Hyper tires. They have some sort of belt inside.

rhm

The NJ Randonneur Club did their end-of-the-year ride and party today. Breakfast, a metric century, and lunch. I rode from home, got about 110 miles in, and had a nice time doing the 100k with about 25 other riders. We kept all in one group for most of the ride, until one rider got a flat. 3/4" heavy duty staple right through the tire and tube, four closely placed holes. 25 riders, 100 km, one flat... that's good, right?

Anyone want to guess who was the rider that got the flat?

edit:
Wait, that's not true. After replacing my tube I encountered another rider who was behind the pack; he, too, had had a flat somewhere along the line. I'm guessing he was already behind me when he got his flat, 'cuz I didn't pass him after. Anyway, so that's two flats for the ride.

jimmuller 

Let me! Let me! Um, was it noglider?

Ed.

Pushing my luck here -



~ 3500 miles. There are several places like this around the tire. No flats.

rhm

Well, that's excellent!

The implication, of course, is that sew-ups are impervious to flats. Which, well... I doubt it, but what do I know. Clearly, however, I have terrible luck with flat tires, and I'm pretty good at dealing with punctured innertubes in clinchers. So, what would sew-ups change? If they changed my luck, that would be wonderful. My fear is that they would only change my ability to deal with flats. I really don't relish the idea of repairing a sew-up tire at the side of the road, in the dark, in the rain... .

Ed.

Actually the front tire has at least another 500 miles on it.

Rather than the type of tire, I attribute flat-free miles to:



tire savers!

YMMV

jimmuller 

I just knew @Ed. was going to attribute his good fortune to tire savers.

As for repairing a sew-up by the side of the road on a dark and stormy night in the snow with zombies coming at you, well, you don't. In those circumstances you just keep riding. Otherwise you swap out the tire, a simpler operation than "fixing" a clincher, then you repair the tire back home in front of a warm fire while sipping your favorite brew. (I carry two spare tires when I go out for a long ride. On my last ride a few weeks ago I threw caution to the winds, lived dangerously, re-used a few overused metaphors, and took only one. I survived, and did not get a flat even though I did not have tire savers.

YMMV.

rhm

Well, I did not have tire savers yesterday. I wish I had, so I could see what this staple



would have done to the tire saver!

noglider 

I wouldn't advise sew up tires on anyone, and I wouldn't expect them to change your luck. On the other hand, I never had to sew a tire on the road. Sometimes I would carry two spares, and I never got more flats than spares I was carrying. Was I lucky? I don't know. But they suck for other reasons, hence my dis-recommendation.

@Ed., you are going to change the tire now, right?

Ed.

Now? It's still has some miles left in it. (But I'd better check to see if my Silica pump is up to the task of an on-road inflation.)

Bikerider007

I had a flat tire a few years back and it was a positive experience (well as positive as that can be). Was riding the canal with my wife and I had a flat just before crossing a busy street. I had a pack with a patch kit and was opening it up and along comes a rider that says, I got it, I have everything right here. Started taking the tire off in a split second. Then a guy pulls over in a car and says, don't do that, here is a tube and pulls a new tube out of his car! I thanked him and offered him some cash and he said, just do it for someone else sometime. I was like, wow.

Probably didn't hurt to have woman with me but man they were cool.

seedsbelize 

I am happy to report that I have had not one flat, on the road, during the calendar year. There were a few on bikes that were hanging, though, and they thus got passed over for that ride. My wife had a couple, but they were repaired in the shop. Of course I had a paltry 4945 accumulated kilometers this year. But the new house is in its final throes before completion, and my time priorities will change accordingly.

Kobe 

You need to get out today and ride 65km's to make it to 5000km. Of course 32.5 km's from home you will probably get a flat.

rhm

Can you believe it, over two months and no flat tires!

Until this morning, that is.

I see the same potholes on my commute every day. I know them all. But sometimes I forget about them, and that happened today because there were cars and I was riding closer to the edge than usual. The constant drizzle didn't help, made it hard to see the road surface in the dark. Anyway, hit the pot hole, got a pinch flat. Changed the tube under the I-95 overpass, but the new tube blew out at the valve just as I got it up to pressure. Walked a half mile to a street light bright enough to patch the first tube, and even with the better light my first patch missed both holes.

seedsbelize 

That reminds me. I had another in-shop flat a couple days ago. The wind blew 0ver my Yukon that was sitting on the porch. Somehow the concrete block dislodged the tire and it got snake-bit. I patched the tube, and as I was topping it off, the valve stem broke, and then shot out at high velocity.

jimmuller 

I am going to have to stop reading this thread. Seeds, rhm, you guys set a bad precedent.

I rode my Raleigh (now with fenders because my sweetie insisted as a way to keep my rain jacket cleaner) to work yesterday. Shortly after lunch I noticed the front tire flat. Hmm it wasn't flat when I arrived at work a few hours earlier.

When I patched it I found a pinhole leak and corresponding to that place inside the tire a tiny shard of wire barely 1mm long. I work in engineering for a company where we make things involving electronics. Now where do you suppose I could have picked up a piece of wire? I have no idea... At least I got to fix in the comfort and light of my workspace.

rhm

Sorry, Jim! It's not my fault, honest.

When I patched my tube on Wednesday, using three patches to fix two holes, I was relieved to be able to get on my bike and ride. I was really relieved to get to my train station without having to try again. But honestly, I was really surprised on Wednesday evening when I got back to my bike and the tire still had air in it. Vulcanizing rubber cement works even in the rain! I found this encouraging.

gaucho777 

I estimate at least half of the flats I get during my commute involve a small piece of wire (maybe 6 flats and ~3k commuting miles per year). It's really quite remarkable since there is a lot of broken glass on my route, but a piece of wire is still usually to blame. The wire often gets ground down on the outside, and just barely poking through the inside, making them hard to find unless you line up the puncture hole in the tube with the tire. I sometimes have to pull them out with needle-nosed pliers. I'd ride tubulars on my commuter more frequently if the roads between Berkeley & West Oakland weren't so full of sharp debris.

rhm

Oh, my! I've been slipping. Sorry!

March 13, riding a century through central NJ, rear flat. Not finding a cause, I changed the tube and we rode away; but the new tube --really a new tube, it had never been used-- leaked around the valve. I pulled out the old tube, patched it, and was on my way. To find the hole I had to hold it under water, and the water I found was a pond with geese in it. Kinda nasty water, and the bank was covered with goose poo. Ugh. But the patch was a success.

April 15, on the PA Randonneurs Fleche, riding through Wall, NJ... rear tire went flat. We were approaching our dinner spot, so I pumped it up and kept riding, but it was soon flat again. Stopped and changed the tube; it was the one I'd patched in March. The patch was fine; there was a new puncture from a piece of glass, which I found. I put in a new tube.

Today, on my ride to the station, having got a late start anyway, rear tire went squishy. I thought, okay, I'll pump it up and ride... only to discover I didn't have my pump with me. Fortunately I was pretty close to three gas stations; I walked a bit, changed my tube, found a 3/4" finishing nail in my tire, and discovered I didn't have a presta adapter with me . Cut the tip off a presta valve cap, screwed it on backwards, and discovered didn't know how to operate the "FREE AIR" compresser. It had instructions on it, but they didn't say how to turn it on. A guy getting coffee saw me and came over and turned it on for me (you push a button... who knew!). Pumped up, and I was on my way. Only about an hour late.

All those were on the same bike (Holdworth 650b conversion), same tire (Grand Bois Hetre 650x42b) running at 45 psi. That's about one puncture per month; pretty good, I think.

jimmuller 

Clearly you need to ride a different bike.

obrentharris 

Pinch flats were the bane of my bicycling adventures until I figured out how high my tire pressure has to be to avoid them. I ride a mixture of pavement and dirt so I walk the tightrope between high pressure to avoid pinch flats and give decent pavement performance and low pressure to provide some traction in loose dirt.

I also have a bad habit of ignoring those very slow leaks that cause loss of tire pressure overnight. I tend to just pump the tire up to pressure in the morning and put off the repair to another day.

This last weekend the chickens came home to roost. While I was preparing for a two hour ride with a friend I noticed that my front tire had lost most of its air since last being ridden two days before: "No harm done" I thought. "It's just a two hour ride. I'll still have decent pressure at the end of the ride." The two-hour ride became a four hour ride and ended with a fast descent of a rough gravel road. Bam! A classic pinch flat from too little tire pressure...

As long as I'm confessing my sins here I will also admit that I'm a friction weenie when it comes to tires. I run smooth treads where I should be running small knobbies or diamond tread. I run tires with "supple" casings when I should be running tires with strong sidewalls. Just as surely as higher pressure will help avoid pinch flats, so higher pressure will also encourage sidewall tears; I've certainly experienced my share of those!
Brent

rhm

That's the problem, or part of it! Two weeks ago I went for a ride with a colleague of my wife's, who was riding a carbon fiber bike with skinny tires, and I felt bad about taking him down into the rough roads of the Pine Barrens with me on a bike with cushy tires and him on hard-as-a-rock 23's. So I rode a different bike. And I put the Holdsworth's pump on that, and never moved it back.

Scary thought: I rode the Holdsworth 80+ miles last weekend, way out into the wilderness of NW NJ, not knowing I didn't have a pump with me. Okay, Milford NJ is not exactly the middle of nowhere, but had I got a flat, I would have been in for some serious walking.

squirtdad

I got my first flat......in a long time (will not mention time to avoid attention of the flat demons) Very small shard of glass that worked it's way into the tire and then the tube, causing a very slow leak Quick pull the tube, get rid of the the offending glass and put the spare tube in, pump it up with the frame pump

the big pain was that for some reason after putting everything back together, the brakes decided they wanted to drag.