^^??

I had bad luck with glueless patches them when they first came and avoided for years until I ran out of 'real' patches and spare tubes a few months ago and was forced to use one from a free Giant patch kit Arrow Bikes of Hyattsville, Maryland gave me at Bike-to-Work day two years ago. The patch held fine and is still holding. Rema Tip Top is still my patch kit of choice, but I no longer shun the glueless patches or consider them a temporary repair. I know a messenger/cat 1 racer who's been using them for years and swears by the square Park glueless patches.

See photo at top of page.

Can you top it?

Had to go to post #27 on page 1 to see the pic, and no I can't top it..

I'm trying to figure out why I'm flatting so much
 

Doesn't matter if it's a patched tube or a new one. Lately, I can't go more than a week without one or the other wheel going down. Inspection of the tires reveal nothing.

lol

Folks, if your patches leak (assuming they're not glueless) then you're doing it wrong, period. Most of the time it's because people don't let the glue dry before putting the patch on. At least 5 minutes is required. Maybe there are junky patch kits out there, but I'm using what's got to be the cheapest one in the world (< $3 for 20+ patches) and I've never had one leak or come off.

For me it's as much a matter of not being wasteful as saving money. I hardly ever get a flat, maybe one or two a year, so it's not going to make much difference to me dollar-wise but it's a waste to throw a tube away due to a pinhole when a square inch of rubber and some glue could fix it perfectly.

And there's absolutely no way you can feel a bump due to a patch inside the tire. I don't think it's even physically possible. The patch pushes the tube INWARD, not the tire outward. I bet if you did a blind test and had someone else put a patched or unpatched tube in, you'd not be able to tell which was which.

Get different tires. I was looking at my rear wheel yesterday and noticed about a dozen cuts and puncture marks in my tire (Gatorskin) - but I've only had one flat with that tire in about 2k miles - and that was a pinch flat from a small but deep pothole that I didnt' see.

As noted here, you can put a lot of patches on a tube. I have about six on the spare tube I keep in my seatbag. Throwing away a tube instead of patching is wasteful, and I like to think dedicated cyclists have better sense than that. IJM is dead right - you gotta let t he glue dry completely. And if anyone out there can feel a patched tube while riding, you must be riding on a road surface made of unobtanium and fairy dust.

Just curious: do tubes degrade over time? In other words, excluding punctures and pinch flats, would you expect the average time between failures to be the same or less for an old tube than for a new tube? If a tube has suffered a leak a couple of times, again excluding punctures, is it more likely to develop another one than a new tube?

Another honest question. I'm fairly sure that given a tire that's old enough and degraded enough to have varying sidewall thickness, perhaps some degree of rot, a cyclist could generally feel the variations. If so, would it be conceivable that the different expansion characteristics of a large patch versus tube would have varying impact on these weakened areas?

If you're having tires go flat and you can't find the culprit, it's probably one of two things. Pinch flat (look for TWO holes instead of just one) or a bad rim strip.

If you have a rubber rim strip, replace it with a cloth one. If you already have a cloth one, check to make sure it's in place properly and is not ripped and allowing a bare metal edge to show.

Just swapped out tubes. The old one with the patch had air leaking out from one side of the patch. So should I attempt to re-patch or write this tube off? To be honest, the puncture was big enough for me to a) hear the hiss, b) feel the air on my skin, and c) actually see it. It wasn't the minor pinpricks that I'm used to having to hunt down (usually have to resort to the ol' bubbles in the sink trick to find the holes).

FWIW, the tires are stock. The bike is an '06 model that I bought in '08 with the intention of commuting to work, but never got around to doing so until last year. I don't believe they are dry rotted, and there is still flashing (is that the term for the little spiky things along the edge?) on both tires. And the wheels do have rubber rim strips.

Are these the type that look like big rubber bands, and have no adhesive?
If so, the downside is they may shift while installing & inflating the tire, allowing the tube to contact the sharp edges of the spoke holes.

Not usually. The big destroyer of rubber is UV light and ozone, and a tube inside a tire is pretty protected from either. It's pretty common to find a bike that's been sitting long enoug the tires have rotted, but the tubes are still perfectly good. One of the tubes I was using until last summer was a 30 year old Michelin tube that had a dozen or so patches in it. The tire it was in died a rather spectacular failure which killed it. but it leaked less day to day than the new, never patched one that's still in the front thweel of the bike.

In my experience, tubes can easily dry rot or otherwise degrade while on the shelf, but not inside the tire. The stem can degrade though since it's exposed to light.

Spare tubes and tires should be kept in a basement or closet, ideally where it's dark and cool. They should keep many years in a cool, fairly dry and dark basement. In fact the chief mechanic for the USPS team famously "ages" all the team's tires in a basement in France for 2 or 3 years before they use any of them.

In the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty small waste. I'm sure that every person who has replied to this thread has wasted money/environmental resources on some item for their bike that is less useful than a new tube. The act of riding a bike to work instead of driving pretty much negates any possible wastefulness derived from not patching an old tube. For those that choose to get new tires rather than replace, there could be lots of plausible reasons. It's quite possible to have lots of sense & still decide that a new tube is worth it.

Also may I add I think its time to replace the tube when you get a flat on top of the patch, which has happened once haha

You beat me to it.

You can patch until you can't patch anymore because of overlap or leaks at the valve stem.

I've never counted, but I have pulled out an inner tube and been shocked at how many patches it had.

I have some 700:35 Schwalbe tubes that have been patched a few times and plan to keep these in service until they cannot be patched... with fully threaded stems UV breakdown is not an issue and they came to me with a number of patches and have been good for well over 20,000 km without suffering any additional flats.

Back in '82, I fished an abandoned MT bike out of the local marina. It had been in there long enough that some critters of some sort (maybe barnacles?) had produced a zillion little holes in both tubes. The bike was not so rusted out that it was not ride-able.
Dad ran an automotive repair shop and I had access to the tire gear, including the patches. I pretty much ended up with tubes made out of patches when I was done! Rode that bike for the whole summer.

No patience = zero times.

Another "til the valve falls off" guy here.

I used to just replace the tube, but these days it depends. If it's the front tire, i'd probably just change the tube and patch it once I got to my destination to use as the spare. If it's the back, I'll find the hole without taking the wheel off and patch it while it's still on the bike to avoid the mess from all the chain grease, plus I don't have to deal with the derailleur, or messing with my chain tension if it's my fixie with that technique.

I replace a tube when a patch on it fails. I've reached eight patches a couple of times, with patch overlap.

I usually patch twice. No rhyme or reason, just something left over in my thinking from many years ago. I do believe that the manufacturers of the glue need to put more in those little tubes, as I run out after a few patches. I usually carry glueless patches as well, but I don't feel as comfortable with those.