noglider 

I never saw the use for presta valve caps. Now I know of one. Thanks, Rudi.

I haven't had a puncture on the road for a long time now. But yesterday, I was fixing up the tandem bike, getting it ready for the first ride with a stoker in years. (I stored the bike and didn't mess with it for a while.) The front tire was flat, so I pumped it up and put the bike aside for an hour, as my wife was busy. Then I saw the tire was flat again. I took the tube out and patched the puncture. I noticed the puncture was among a big bunch of abrasion marks. I guess another one of those marks gave out, because it went flat again in time for our ride. My wife has been resistant to the idea of a tandem. I hope she changes her mind once we get a good ride in, but it will have to wait another couple of weeks. I bought a couple of replacement tubes, one to replace the abraded tube and another to keep as a spare.

jimmuller 

I got 90% of the commute home when I realized my rear tire was soft. It wasn't too soft to ride so I just continued on home. I fixed after dinner but discovered the tire is getting quite worn. The last time I tried riding on a tire like this I had 4 flats in 2 days.

Drillium Dude

Looks familiar. I just removed my tricolori Vittorias the other day to guard against this possibility. Got a couple good cuts in the green center portion of the tread, and a couple small delaminating sections in the white. It sux when a tire is pretty much taken out of circulation simply because of a tread cut, but the chances of something working its way into said cut and then causing a flat is too great. Oh, well...

DD

gearbasher

Riding by the shore today, 7 miles into a 65 mile ride, I ran thru a shallow patch of sand. It was deep enough to conceal a nice sized piece of gravel. I nailed it with my rear tire and snake bite.

gearbasher

The mother of all flats?

This happened a while ago and I saved a piece of the rim. I just found it digging through some junk.

I don't know what I hit, but it went through the tire, through the top and bottom of the tube, through the plastic rim strip and did this to my poor Ambrosio Excellence rim:

Flog00

Flat today. My wife saved me.

20160522_172840 by flog00, on Flickr

Small piece of wire.

20160522_185640 by flog00, on Flickr

bobbyl1966

do you check the rim tape? maybe i have move and make the inner tube blow,

greg3rd48 

Over the past two weeks I have had eight, EIGHT flats on my U08 while commuting to and fro work. The Panaracer Paselas that are on it have over 2,000 miles on them and the tread is quite worn but I expected more miles out of these tires. I have patched way too many pinholes and have found myself rushing to get to work on time despite being early. After two more flats on the way in yesterday I relented and ordered a pair of Pasela PT's. Hopefully they will prove more resilient on these NY streets.

Vieux chnoque

Well quit moaning about flat tires, this cyclist doesn't and he has probab;ly more reasons than you do

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWCDEAYn8rQ

jimmuller 

That's a tough pill, innit?

You must have to ride on some tough streets. I would have expected more than 2000 miles from Paselas. I've worn out lightweight Vittoria and Veloflex tires in 1000 miles to where the tread was a paper-thin layer of black. But the only Paselas we've ever worn out was the rear tire on the tandem.

rhm

But this whole thread is all about moaning about flat tires! We don't bore our spouses by talking about flat tires over dinner. We don't use flat tires an an excuse for why we were late for work. We just post our flat tires here, so someone else can enjoy the thought that they did not have a flat tire today.

I did not have a flat tire today. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed that video! Very impressive. I wonder how long it took him....

w1gfh

This may have already been covered, but slow leaks are almost as maddening as flats. I'd just put in new tubes. But after a full pumping, my back tire would be noticeably soft three days later. After immersing the tube in a sinkful of water, I could see an air bubble slowly forming on the pin in the Schrader valve. So, it was bad QC on Kenda's part.

noglider 

OK, so I can moan, too. I haven't had a flat on the road in a long time. I can't remember the last time. But I was getting our tandem ready and noticed the front tire was flat. I found the leaking hole using water and noticed that there was a patch of marks that looked just like the leaking hole, as if the tube had been abraded somehow. I patched the hole, and the tube went flat again. I replaced the entire tube, because I didn't want to repeat the experience. It's not often I do that, but it seemed prudent. I put a new tube in and also bought a new spare, so we should be good for a while.

We took our first ride on our tandem Sunday, and we had a blast.

somasanmarcos

Unfortunately, today this post resounds significantly with me today. This morning, it was a rare clear and beautiful day after the past month of cr***y weather we have been experiencing. I set out in the morning for my commute and realize that my front tire is flat. The tube is weirdly shredded in one place but the tire is undamaged. I swap out the tube and as i'm pumping it up, BANG!!! The tire blows out. The new tube and the tire both show the same weird shredding damage in the same place for no apparent reason. I drove to and from work in gorgeous weather cursing DC traffic I was driving slower than my usual bike speed

rhm

Saturday, July 2, @greg3rd48 greg3rd48 drove out to Long Island early in the morning and we went for a ride. Somewhere near mile 4 I went over a small stone, easily avoided by anyone paying attention, i.e. not me. Instant pinch flat. I replaced the tube and we rode on.

I patched it later, near mile 35, while Greg... well, I'll let him tell that part of the story.

greg3rd48 

As @rhm mentioned I road out to LI at 330AM for a 530AM start to the ride. We covered right around 118 miles but I am unsure of the climbing since the two apps do not seem to agree with each other on that. The weather was great and the scenery out on the Eastern end of LI is incredible. Rudi knows his way around really well and it was well worth the trip.

So Rudi has a flat early on which was a quick fix and traffic was pretty negligible. Right outside of South Hampton Community College I suddenly started bouncing in the saddle. I had a quickly deflating tire so I must have run over some sharp object on the shoulder. We pulled onto the grass at the entrance to the college where I expeditiously began to change the tube. Within minutes a campus police car came over to check on what we were doing and then to see if we needed help once it was obvious that we weren't up to anything nefarious. We thanked him and assured him that we had been in this predicament before. Another campus police car came to us shortly thereafter to check on us too. It was good to see that the campus is being protected well!

I changed the tube quickly and was revved up to get back on the road but Rudi wisely asked if I had found the culprit. I had not and assumed it was a "puncture and out". He suggested that I turn the tire inside out just to be sure and lo and behold he finds the small shard of metal wire stuck through the tire and extracts it with pliers. I will never make the mistake of being to hasty again because that would have been another flat within a mile.

SJX426 

Monday, on the way home, I noticed a ticking sound when I coasted with my right foot all the way down. Really strange. I didn't think too much about it as I was picking up a CL find white Brooks Professional Pro Saddle that was mounted and had less than 100 miles on it. While I was waiting for the seller, I checked the tire for any protrusions from the outside. None.


At home, I looked at the bead and found some stray threads sticking out of the bead tape. This is is a Specialized Pro tire and has a cloth "base" tape over the bead. I cut them all off and pumped the tire up. It went flat. Found a hole less than a 1/2 from the valve stem on the valve stem side of the tube. Check the rim tape for anything that might have caused the puncture, nothing.

A new tube was put in and the inflated, It too quickly failed. This time the rip was about an inch away from the valve stem and again on the rim side of the tube. The rim had 3 layers of rim tape on it so I pealed the first layer off checking it carefully. I found a small AL shaving that fell on my hand as I was removing the tape. It had a sharp edge so I thought that must be it. A new tube was installed and pumped to 110 lbs.

The ride to work the next day was fast for me. I couldn't believe how hard it was to keep up with the bike often cruising at 20 to 22 mph. I couldn't wait for the ride home to see if my legs were still with me. I was about to put my helmet on when I noticed the tire was completely flat, no residual are at all and tire flopping on the rim. I caught a ride home thinking that I would be wasting my time and material trying to get home on more multiple flats.

I was pretty disgusted at this point so I quickly removed the tube and found a rip in the same place as the last one. I have pealed off all the rim tape, checked the rim. The tubes all are Michelin tubes and appear to have a weak spot just past the valve stem at the edge of the reinforced rubber ends for the valve stem. I am thinking it is poor design or workmanship of the tube.

It is going to rain today so I will attack this problem when I get home.

mapeiboy

I used this years back till I had a flat on the road and had a hard time to get it off the rim of Campy wheel . Switched to Cont GP 4k and its so easy to get it on and off the campy wheels .

mapeiboy

So you walked 9 miles at night in the rain to meet her .

rhm

I had a strange one last month. The bike sat in my bike locker at the train station for almost a week, and the rear tire went flat. Completely flat. I pumped it up and rode home, checking at one point to see if the tire needed more air. It didn't. At home, it still wasn't flat so I used the floor pump, pumped it up to 80 psi and left it till morning. In the morning it was still at 80 psi.
Now, a month later, it's still holding air. WTF.

rhm

No, if I read it right, he rode his folding bike, in the rain.

My policy on calling my wife is: don't do it. She would probably come for me, but there might be hidden costs. If there's any way to avoid it, I will.

jimmuller 

It is good timing that this thread awoke today.

I wanted to ride my Grandis to work this morning. I last rode it maybe two weeks ago. It has clinchers which do not lose air as fast as a tubular's latex tube. Nevertheless I always top off the tires with an electric pump before starting out. I put the pump on the front and it read maybe 110psi. I pumped it to its max (140psi). As I was I putting the pump on the rear I heard the front go fssssssss very quietly. I hoped it was just a loose removable valve core (an "issue" I've seen before and the reason I don't really like them). No such luck. The air was coming from where the valve goes through the rim, meaning it was a tube leak. Bummer. Well, I had to ride the Masi instead. Life has its little trade-offs occasionally.

noglider 

I didn't have a flat, as luck had it. I had planned to ride about three miles to the train station, which I did, and the train pulled out as I reached the station, requiring me to ride 16 miles home in the dark without good lights and on my crappy folding bike. In the end, it worked out.

Northwestrider

Schwalbe is the answer imo .

jimmuller 

Schwalbe is the answer to riding 16 miles in the dark without good lights on a crappy folding bike? Whodathunkit?