So annoying!

On Tuesday a week ago I went to work for a half day, and then home, because I had to drive 5 hours in the afternoon/evening to an out-of-town conference. Of course biking home I got a flat which I repaired at roadside.

As usual I inspected the tire and rim, and found a slender wire in the tire which I removed. I put in a new tube and pumped it up with the hand pump which only gets it up to about 50 psi, adequate to get home.

On Sunday after I got back from the conference I remembered I needed to finish pumping up the tire and it seemed fine. Monday (yesterday) morning it felt firm, but I only got halfway to work before it went flat. I was running late (Monday morning!) so I just locked it and hailed a cab, and then came back at 5:30 to repair it. I found a pinpoint hole in the tube and a careful inspection revealed no hazards in the tire or rim, so I patched it and rode on, but halfway home it went flat again and I had to walk the last 3 km or so.

I was too annoyed/unmotivated to repair it again so today I rode the back up bike.

Three flats in two commuting days! I'll have to look really closely at the tire and rim again - maybe there's a hazard I missed, or maybe just bad luck.

i had a hidden hazard in my tire. I came out one morning and it was flat as a pancake...I hadn't ridden it in a few days and though I might very well have deflated it as I was moving the bike all around the garage and what not. So I pumped it up, went inside, ate breakfast yada yada came back out maybe an hour later and it was still good and firm. Rode it to work, back home, still looked fine to me upon a visual inspection.
Wake up the next day, and again it is flat as a pancake. Drove to work that day because I didn't feel like changing it right then. Get home, change it, look/feel around for any hazard that might be in there, didn't find anything, replaced the tube, pumped it up..everything looked fine.
Rode it to work the next day, rode it home, everything looked fine....next morning, flat as a pancake again.

I mean, come on now. At this point I am out of spare tubes, so I wait until I can pick a few more up, then change the tube again. Took about 20 minutes to find a shard of metallic something. I couldn't see it from the inside, and the only way to find it was by going over the outside and really digging into each cut in the tire. It must have just barely poked through just enough to puncture my tube. I could not easily find the leak in the tubes either. They both seemed to hold their air. That little punk.

Certainly just bad luck, but something going tubeless (with a bit of sealant) would definitely prevent.

I was unemployed for the summer a few years ago and riding a lot more than usual (trying to save gas money). There were a few months where I was getting flats all the time. I feel your pain. Goatheads were all over the place near my house and the Bontrager 700 x 23s I had loved picking them up. I was getting 4 or 5 flats a week. Once, I even got 3 in a single day. Very annoying. I ended up switching my tires to Continental Gatorskins in 25. I haven't had a flat in over 2 years now (knock on wood), and I commute to work everyday. I was genuinely about to quite bicycling or lose my mind one, hahaha. Good luck and hopefully your bad spell with flats ends very soon.

Did you track whether the hole in the tube would be on the inside or outside of the tube when it's rolling? Just because if it's on the inside, it's not a tire issue, it's a rim tape issue.

My experience:
1. New tire and tube. 6 months of uneventful riding.
2. Flat tire. Find or don't find source in tire. Change tube. 6 more weeks of uneventful riding.
3. Flat tire. Still no source found. Suspect tiny thorn or metal shaving. Change tube again. 6 more days of uneventful riding.
4. Flat tire. EFF it, change the tire AND the tube.
5. Go to step 1.

I look at the outside of the tire, but then turn it inside out and run my fingers over the inside (now outside). Thorns and wires can be worn down on the ouside, but still protrude on the inside.

Thanks - For the first one it was high on the outside (crown) and seemed to match the spot where there was a piece of fine wire (like a mangled staple) in the tire. The second tube puncture was also in the crown area, so probably not due to a problem with the rim, unless the tube was rotated a bit, but unfortunately I forgot to check the position of the tire before I pulled it off to try to match the tube and tire location. I haven't pried the tire off a third time but before I do I'll try to note it's label position relative to the stem, so when I find the tube puncture I can examine the right part of the tire (or rim) most closely. The rim tape is intact.

Take a cotton ball, fluff it up a bit, and drag it around the inside fo the tire. Should snag on anything sticking through the tire, which you can then pull out. I've had tires collect a bunch of thin wires (from a radial tire blow out, I think), and then got a series of flats in quick succession. I've also found the lot of them with a cotton ball (I carry one in my patch kit, it weighs nothing; in a pinch on the road, you should be able to find a cigarette filter...) and probably prevented a couple doing this.

Haven't had that problem in a long time, since I decided I like kevlar belted tires...

All last winter I was getting flats; at least one a week and sometimes more. When the snow melted in the spring, I found I had been putting my bike down on a board with nails in it all winter.

I'm not really sure what you mean by the crown area, but you have a whole lot less tire to check if you keep track of where the tube flat is relative to the tire itself. :-) Usually a tire has a decal or something that stands out on the sidewall, I know some people try to always match that up with the stem when putting the tire back on so they have a reference point for where the flat would have occurred on the tire.

I feel your pain. I've had my share of serial flat episodes throughout the years. It drives me nuts. Usually I find that it is something I missed during the rush to repair it the first or second or third(!) time and not a new issue. So I end up in the home shop doing a super complete and thorough tire and rim inspection, cleaning, and tube replacement. That always does the trick but it means I have to make the time to do it properly when I might not otherwise have it. I'm grateful to have back up bikes I can jump on until I get the time.

The crown is the outer portion of the tube or tire that contacts the pavement. https://www.1010tires.com/About/Glossary

I've had two since I posted my questions about tubeless a few weeks ago. I love my light-carcass tires on my old bikes and I'm about ready to try it. Can't really with hookless 27" rims... I'll think of something.

I've had a tire like that, it had been run tubeless and when I mounted it with tube it got pinhole after pinhole from accumulated thorns.
I've also discovered an unintended consequence of heavy duty urban tires is that small stuff can hide in their thick tread and cause a slow leak. I rode for 3 days with a hunk of glass in my tire before I realized it was there because I just topped up what I though was a slightly porous tube.

One time i had 3 flats in two weeks. I rode 2 times in those two weeks, mostly because i was spending a lot of time with a lady friend.

Why are 2 dollar tubes being sold for 10 dollars a piece**********??!!!!? gahhhhh, double the pain!

- Andy

I always turn my tires inside-out as I inspect them. This causes hidden objects to pop out where you can see them.