In over 6000 miles of riding these past few years I have had two flats and they were a Specialized 23 mm wide tire at 125 psi on a race bike and one on my recumbent a 32 mm Comet racer tire also at around 120 psi.
My current tires are 700x 32 (30mm actual) Panaracer Urbanmax at 90 psi and the newest Schwalbe Marathon 700x47 (41) actual at 70 psi. I have not flatted in about 5500 miles since switching to wider lower pressure tires of higher quality. I weigh 260 pounds so I need good flat resistance. Narrow skinny tires are for actual racers and are not really practical or comfortable. They are a little faster on asphalt but not on chipseal roads. I think its a mistake to ride narrow rubber on a commute bike.

Good points about the likelihood of flatting when it rains, but don't misinterpret my original post. Before I got my road bike the mtb was my daily ride and that was when I had all the flats. I don't see a lot of rain in any case.

Also, I wouldn't consider 28mm to be a narrow tire.

Ok, I had a flat front tire this evening when I went to ride home.

I don't consider myself to be superstitious, but I am really regretting starting this thread now..

Oh yeah, it was a fat tire.

This is an interesting thread. Most of my flats have occurred with my Road Bike with skinny tires, with my MTB I flat rarely. I use both on the same roads, rain or shine. My LBS told me he believes skinny tires are more resistant to flatting, however that has not been my experience.

I ran with kevalr Paselas for years and had extremly few flats compared to my other tires. It may not make it fralt PROOF but it sure helps.

For me it's shards of glass (most common) followed by rose or blackberry thorns followed by wire slivers.

Yeah, I think there are two reasons why rain = punctures:

1) Rain will cause a sharp object to stick to the tire and thereby give it a few chances to catch and puncture.

2) Rain strikes sharp objects which were lying flat; they can land less flat and stick to the ground, thus making them much more dangerous.

[QUOTE=cerewa;5649823

EDIT: I have also had most of my flats on rainy days. I have a hard time figuring out why that is [QUOTE]



cause it sucks to fix anything in the rain. maybe you pissed off the weather gods.

When I ran pneumatics in an urban commute I found that my road bike flatted frequently while the mtb w/knobbies, rarely. My commute was 20 mi rt all on high traffic roads w/plenty of debris. I think I flatted on my mtb once in four years. The tires were a set I found in a dumpster attached to an X-Mart mtb. Had Mr Tuffys in both the roadie and the mtb. Kenda Kwest 700x28mm on the roadie. Seemed every other time I'd ride my rb I'd get a flat, so I just rode the mtb for a couple of years, unless I had a mechanical of some sort. My commute's 40 mi rt now and I use airless on all 3 of my commuters...no stress.

Interesting, I've had more flats with skinny tires. Plus, my rain bike has two inchers on it. Strangely, when my brother first got a road bike he also got the Continental Ultra Sports and he only had one or two flats in several thousand miles of commuting, and they're not even puncture resistant!

Get some Schwalbe Marathons. What you need is a good tire. Larger is less likely to flat than smaller; but quality rules.

What brand and type of airless do you have. Any down sideto them?

I only really know about mtb tires; glass and wire rarely seem to puncture a tire straight away but has to work its way in to the tire and then holes the inner tube. I usually go over my tires once every couple of months and its amazing how much glass you can actually cut out of them.

Thorns are the only thing bar large objects that will go straight through a mtb tire. The only two things that completely wrote tires off was riding over half a broken bottle in the dark that was standing up and the other time a drill bit that was welded through a piece of sheet metal so the bit itself was pointing upwards, (I still have that somewhere, almost like it was made for the purpose of causing a puncture).

I wonder also if riding with mtb tires makes you subconsciously more gung-ho when riding over stuff? Also due to the knobbly bits on mtb tires its often harder to see stuff like goatheads sticky out of the tires maybe?

When I lived in the UK late autumn was a bad time due to hedgerows being trimmed by the farmers I would average one puncture aweek and that was with tire liners in place due to the tons of hawthorns and blackthorns lying around.

I've run City Slickers for 13,000 km and have had exactly one flat. You've just got to be more careful and watch what you're riding through. Not easy when you commute in the dark, but stay out of the gravel areas and you'll be fine.

I've had numerous flats in all my skinny tyres, and never one in Schwalbe Marathons, of which I have two pairs.

I had more flats when I rode a MTB with knobbies, and my hybrid with 35's. I went to 25's with extra kevlar reinforcement, and I have averaged one road flat a year, not including my Schrader valve stem fatigue blow outs, but I remedied that by converting to Presta valves. I've ran over some serious debris, making some loud popping noises, and I was relieved to hear no hissing sounds and to have a still fully pressured tire at the end of the commute. Just looking at all the serious gashes in my tire, makes me think that a lesser quality tire would have left me on the side of the road many more times making tube repairs.

Go get some Continental Travel Contacts (26 x 1.75 ) and call me in the morning.

I ran a set of Panaracer Tri Sport 27 by 1 tyres for a good 5000 km in all conditions last year with no flats, have run the same set of Schwalbe Hurricanes (26 by 2) on my fixed mtb (and other bikes) for 3000 km in all conditions and snow with no flats, and figure that I have rode more than 20,000 km in the last year and a half.

With no flats.

I did have a newly fitted tyre blow out on me before I even rode my bike but that relates to a bad lot of Kenda tubes we had at our shop... after numerous blowouts we returned the whole lot of them.

The Hurricane are long wearing, fast, and puncture resistant, the Panaracers are just amazing, and I also run Schwalbe CX Compe tyres on my cross bike that sees almost all my no fixed commuting miles and gets a lot of other mileage.

I am thinking that it's been a few years of flat free riding and I am way overdue.

+1000

personally I've run dozens of tires, both road and mtb, of various widths & quality, on the nasty 12mile r/t commute I run. The $5 Nashbar or Performance special (of any size) is gonna flat more often than the nice (insert your favorite brand here) tire. the cheap tires average about 3-10 days between punctures!

Best luck for me has been Armadillos and Marathons. Last set of Marathons: 5k miles, 1.75" width, one flat. though i am cheating by running tubeless

About to give some Conti Sport Contacts a try

Yes, when the hand cut the tread on specialist car tires, the do it with wet rubber, it cuts better.
Also, are you running different roads? As others have said, the city slicker is not the most resistant tire out there.

I worked my way through college working at a tire place. There is no doubt that wet rubber cuts and punctures more easily than dry rubber. One reason farmers stay out of the fields in the rain (when possible) is to avoid costly damage to their very expensive tractor tires.

jim