alloo

How many flats do you get over a year commuting? Is your bike a balloon tire or a thin tire? Do skinny tired bikes get more snake bite flats? Curious.

chas58

Do a search on this - I did a poll on it a while back in this forum.

In my experience:
larger tires with more tread pick up more debris that gets lodged in the rear tire and causes me flats
I get a lot more snake bite (pinch flats) on skinnier slicks (well, I ride fairly aggressively).
My tubeless tires get no flats - punctures get sealed and pinch flats are impossible. Obviously it is possible to flat any tire, but its pretty hard to flat a tubeless tire. I just gotta mess with that sealant stuff and have compatible wheels/tires. I carry a flat kit, but have not used that kit in years now

BobbyG

My main commuter runs 700x35 tires, my old road bike 700x28, and my old mountain bike commuter 26x1.85 smoothies in the summer and 1.65 sutdded snow tires with aggresive tread in the winter.
Used to get 1-2 flats a month. (Freaking goat-head thorns). Started using tire liners (Mr. Tuffy's). Now maybe 1-2 flats a year.

People on bikeforums generally don't care for tire liners, but they work for me. I've tried heavier, more puncture-resistant tires and they tend to not have supple sidewalls, which is what I prefer.

I suppose the newest way to deal with punctures is to go tubeless and use (and maintain) the sealer-goo that one squirts inside them. It seems to work for most who do it.

noglider 

I don't know. I guess I get two or three flats a year, but that's an average. They don't come in even distribution.

The last puncture I had leaked slowly enough that I was able to pedal home without doing anything. This was on the way home at night. By morning, the tire was flat, and I patched the tube. That was a lucky puncture.

caloso

2 so far this year. I generally commute on one of my road bikes with 25mm tires. One flat was on an old tire I was trying to eke out a few more miles. The other was from installation error.

AusTexMurf

Personally, I have had one flat in the past 2.5 years.
On a Schwalbe Hurricane 26 inch tire on my 91 Bridgestone MB this week.
I prefer fast rolling tires, as light as feasible.
The Hurricane is a great front tire on a rigid mtn bike. It is pretty light and fast. Keep them up front for reliable cornering in most conditions.
This one picked up first flat after multiple rides through our Texas wildflowers on narrow, natural mulch surface trails through the meadows.
Oh well.

I have rolled Continental Travel Contacts, both 700 and 26 inch sizes(9 of them total), and don't think that I have had one flat on any of them.
And they roll very nicely in nearly all conditions excepting deep mud and ice. Great on or off pavement. Worked well enough in Ohio snow. Did go down on them on ice a couple of times, but that is to be expected.

Vittoria Voyager Hypers and Panaracer TServs and Paselas are all excellent tire choices as well, IMO.
Nice rolling tires w/ enough flat protection for me.
Haven't experienced a single flat on the Hypers on my Bianchi Volpe and these tires are starting to show significant wear.
That being said, I prefer a nice rolling tire and don't mind changing the occasional flat.

We have had 3 flats on my boys BMX bikes in the past month as they were riding a lot through the meadows in April and May, too.
We have poky plants here in ATX. August and September are the worst with our grass burrs everywhere.

no motor?

Last time I answered this question I got a flat. I'm not telling now.

joelcool

My experience is flats come in waves. I have 700 x 25 tires on my road bike, 700 x 32 on my rain bike (I guess neither one is a "balloon" tire). I do so many more miles on my road bike I can't comment on which tire size gets more flats.

Skipjacks

The cycling gods are a vindictive bunch.

justsaymint

2 since I stopped using tire liners a few months ago

mcours2006

Three so far this year.

CliffordK

Numbers don't count without thinking of miles.

I probably average one flat or so every 1000 miles or so.

I've been riding on my Protek Cross Max tires for a while and I don't think I've had a flat with them yet (probably 1500 to 2000 miles).

I pulled my Bike Friday out a couple of days ago. Slow leak, plus the tire was pretty rotten so when I aired it up, I got bluges. So new tire on the rear + patched tube.

I'll get the occasional pinch flat, but try to minimize them when I'm riding 23/25 tires. Generally meaning I've failed to top off the tires, or the pinch flat is secondary to a slow leak.

I'm pretty careful about what I run over.

Archwhorides 

I'm running Conti Gatorskin Hardshell 700x32 at 80-90 psi on pretty sh*tty city streets.

On average, I get a flat every year or so (about 3,600+ miles) and replace the tires every 5,000+ miles or so.

Gresp15C

1 or 2 per year. Oddly enough since switching to puncture resistant tires, my flats tend to be due to other causes such as failure of the rim tape, or the stem getting damaged, since I can now leave a tire on a wheel for years without paying any attention to it.

no motor?

Yes they are.

guidosan

I am commuting on a mtn bike morphed as a roadie with 1.5" slicks. Since the middle of last year until now, I have lost count of how many flats I have gotten. Construction right near work, and I seem to pick up staples and broken wire or glass on a regular basis. Problem is I never see the stuff on the road so hard to avoid. A couple of weeks ago I got three flats on three days of commuting. Then there are the days that I get two flats either on the ride into work or the ride home.

cyccommute 

I seldom get flats while commuting. I’ve had a few over 37 years of riding to work but not many.

Both. I ride road bikes and mountain bikes to work.

That depends on tire pressure. While fat tires can be run at lower pressure without pinch flatting, they can still be pinch flatted. And, before you go thinking that tubeless is the panacea for pinch flats, realize that while tubeless can pinch flat, a low tire pressure is no protection against rim damage if you want to run low pressures. A pinch flat costs pennies to repair. A damaged rim is a far more expensive repair.

FlMTNdude

A lot of radial tire wire in my area. If I used standard setup, an easy 2 flats per month, possibly more. I use Mr Tuffy liners, and knock on wood, this is including recreational riding, maybe 2 sidewall punctures a year, and somewhere along the way a pinch flat. I allow enough time in my commute for changing a tube in the dark just in case.

ThermionicScott 

I average a couple flats over 3000-5000 miles each year, only one or two have been during the commute.

The rate is low enough that I'm content to stick with tubes, and just recently patched up 7 tubes that had punctured in the last few years.

rhm

There's a thread in the C&V subforum that some people () have turned into a running flat tire blog for almost five years now:

I hate flat tires...

I've been getting about a dozen flats each of the last three years, down from two or three dozen every year before then. A big part of the reduction is that I'm now riding fatter tires at lower pressure.

There are a few factors that make a difference between skinny tires at high pressure and fat tires at low pressure:

1. A wider tire takes a wider path and consequently hits more debris. This increases the likelihood of a puncture.

2. Since the rider's weight is distributed over a larger area, they deflect around bits of debris, which therefore doesn't get through them quite as easily as high pressure tires. This decreases the likelihood of a puncture.

3. Air under low pressure escapes slowly in comparison to air under high pressure. This decreases the likelihood of having to fix a puncture on the road.

4. Fat tires hold a lot more air than skinny ones, so it takes longer for it to get so low that you can't ride. This decreases the likelihood of having to fix a puncture on the road.

All that is unrelated to the quality of the tire. No doubt some tires are tougher than others, but that's a different phenomenon.

Some tires are faster than others. That, too, is a separate phenomenon.

I do not subscribe to the idea that skinny high pressure tires are faster than fat low pressure tires. They definitely feel faster, but that again is a separate phenomenon.

blackieoneshot 

Had my first puncture flat in five years last week. GreenGuard Marathon vs construction staple (rainy lunch hour edition.) I run lighter weight Schwalbe tires on most of the other bikes and I am really happy with the protection.

noglider 

I discovered these truths a few weeks ago. Coming home late one night, my front tire was low. It was still firm enough to ride, and I rode gently. I got home without stopping. By morning the tire was flat. I patched the tube in the convenience of my home. This was a 650x38b tire. Nice. I hope I get to keep them. They seem to be stretching and are threatening to rub against the frame which was built for narrow 700c tires.

SylvainG

Over 15000 km on my tires and on my Shwalbe tires, never got a flat, which accounts for about 8 000 km of the time. For the other 7 000 km, on my Continental GP4000 II, I got three. One was a real road puncture, the other was sliced side running over a patch of gravel (both were two years ago). The third one, today, was when I took the bike out this morning and the rear tire was flat. The flat was caused by a hole in the tube seam, toward the rim. Simple hole, no snake bite and no rim abrasion.Tube was there for two years, I guess it gave up.

fietsbob

#1 , retired , schwalbe marathon plus, tires ,, + thorn resistant heavy tubes ..

no flats per year, over several years running...

rumrunn6

statistically, I've got a whole year, including a winter w/o a single flat