What pump do you use ?

is there anything wrong with airless tires? that sounds amazing! why wouldnt everyone have them?

It just says park tools on it, its blue and is a floor pump, it was 40$. :S

Jack Thurston of 'The Bike Show' has come to the same conclusion as the OP: biking does suck and driving cars is the way to go. See his podcast posted yesterday, April 1st, wrapping up the Bike Show, soon to be called 'The Automobile Show':

https://thebikeshow.net/

They're heavy, provide inferiour cushioning compared to pnematic tires, hard to install, they slow you down, people say they feel like you're riding on a nearly flat tire.

But a few people claim that these trades are worth it for the times they absolutely need to get someplace on time and cannot risk delay due to flat. I think I've seen that opinion stated... 1 time.




And what is up with this, ??have to deflate down to 80 psi before you can start inflating higher?? Sounds like crap advice from that LBS. If you have a pump that has a max rating of 80 it certainly would never go above that. And if you have a pump thats already good enough to push to 120 then there shouldn't be any reason it needs to start at 80.
Just try doing it normally, top of the pressure without wasting the effort of partially deflating first.

You need a better pump (or a little more butt). I keep my road bike tires at 120+...and typically top them off when they are still 100-115 without having to let additional air out.

That said, it IS a good idea to break the seal of your presta valve...which of course will release a short blast of air, prior to putting the pump head on.

If i do it normally it feels like im pushing against a closed valve. And it doesnt seem to just be breaking the seal, i have to depressurize it to ~80 not just let a little burst out :S Either way im not too concerned about this, I just dont want my flats.

If they ride as slow as if I was on a flat then I wouldnt consider it but if its just a little slower, maybe.

The only unresolved question is armadillo tires vs tuffy tire liners.

Try an armadillo on the back for a week. Let us know.

I would go knobbies before I tried airless.

Yeah, you can always just buy one tire to test it out. Or you could try a bit of each - buy one Armadillo tire and one Tire Liner and try them both, one on each wheel.

But personally, I'd go with the Armadillo's. I've heard to many people say they didn't quite install their tire liner right and the tire liner itself ended up puncturing their tube and causing a flat. Ride quality is also affected by the liner, though I don't know if it's more than the Armadillo or not. And for the liner to work, something would first puncture the entire tire than be stopped by the liner, whereas with the Armadillo it only gets about halfway through the tire before being stopped.

Also, the other posters are right - perhaps there's something wrong with your pump, but while letting the air pressure down to 80 shouldn't hurt anything none of the rest of us have to do that. fyi.

My armadillo 23mm are not that bad a ride. Considering they are on a road bike, and ridden on some really bad roads they are no more harsh than one would expect. They also look pretty good with the dull red bit! I have ridden over stones and glass with them on, with no problems. You often hear stones shooting out from under your tyres!

FWIW I use a road morph pump and don't bother letting the pressure down, I just press the presta valve to break the seal and then pump away - saves me pumping loads!

I'd be going insane if this happened to me. I've had two flat tires in my entire life, not counting two schrader stems that blew out in the garage overnight because of a sharp-edged hole on a steel 27" rim (solved by switching to presta with a bushing).

Of those two, one was caused by a protruding spoke head and crappy rim tape in a cheap wheel and the other happened yesterday when the rain camoflaged our enormous post-winter potholes and I hit two in a row on 25c Ultra Sports. I think I might have pinch flatted on the first and hit the second with the tire flat already, in which case I'm VERY grateful (and surprised) that the rim isn't dented.

Clearly I don't ride enough miles.

Also you do not live in an area with goatheads, lucky you. Does your area have a beverage bottle deposit requirement? That can eliminate a lot of glass on the roads. Unfortunately Nevada, where I am, does not.

The Armadilos are reasonably puncture resistant for those with puncture problems but from a lot of posts I have read here the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires are even more so. I just purchased a set and intend to install them soon.

It's OK. Don't feel guilty. You can get a car. Once I biked everywhere. Then when I started driving I thought my life went downhill. The truth is I transitioned into another phase of my life. We have 2 cars and 8 bikes. I have no idea what phase I am in. Doesn't matter though - I'll be 50 tomorrow and nothing really matters to me anymore. DRIVE SAFE!

All right ... it just sounded from what you said like you flattened them every night.

How do you know your tires depressurize down to 90 psi overnight? How do you know that 90 psi is too low for you?

When you have flats, do you fix the tube or change it? And when you put the tube into the tire, are you being really careful so that no part of the tube is being pinched? Are you able to identify the cause of your flats?

True, never seen a goathead. I see glass all the time, in fine sprinklings at the sides of the roads, but it's never caused me any damage.

Goatsheads are MUCH more lethal to tubes than glass. Nasty little things.

So, Topeak or Blackburn for my future frame pump?

Mr. Tuffy liners are great. As far as the question about knobbies and wider tires, that would be pure speculation. People have bad luck on a particular tire, and they claim the tire is not flat resistant...but it's purely anecdotal.

We all go through stretches where it seems we can't go for a ride without a flat...then we go through other stretches without a flat for long periods of time. Main thing is to accept that flats are part of riding. Be prepared to fix it on the road and keep riding.

Road Morph...anything else is for wussy.

Oh really? I thought Road Morph WAS for wussy(s), with foot peg and hose and gauge and all that stuff making it easy, and frame pumps were for the hardcore.

That's what you get for thinking. Rest now.

lol, it totally is! If you're hardcore, you get one of those pumps that fits into your underseat bag and use it to pump your tires up to 130psi. If you're *really* hardcore, all you carry is a CO2 cartridge and an adapter which lets all the CO2 out at once in to the tire - just one shot to refill the tire. If you're really, really hardcore you don't carry the adapter, LOL.

If you're a big wussy who wants to be able to inflate their tire fully, quickly, and easily after a flat without killing themselves doing it you carry a Road Morph.

So I've heard....a lot. It's weird that I haven't seen them in my local shops. Just Blackburn frame pumps and Topeak micros, master blasters and such.

Could be sold out due to high demand...or your local shops could cater to weight-weenie roadies who think Road Morphs are for freds.

I just had to resurrect this.
I made it 3000km on my last set of tubes. I avoided entire parts of my trip which had the most junk, and every 300km or so I would deflate my tires entirely and pick out all the glass. (deflate them so i could squeeze the tire and open up the holes that the glass was in).

Either way it made me happy, and the tube that ended up popping was the one which had a Gatorskin tire and a Tuffy tire liner. I had one tire with that combo and another tire (front so its not quite the same) with just a basic tire which has 10km on it. Which makes me beleive entry level tires are just as good as puncture proof ones. That was my little experiment but I will keep it going to get some stats.

My own experience says to fight flats with the tire, though I note you are already using kevlar. After 5 flats in 6 days, and not much riding, I tried slime, liners, and puncture resistant tires. Ultimately, I went with a Schwalbe Marathon double defense on the front, and a Bontrager Invert something or other on the rear. I haven't had a flat since, and that's been over 1,500 miles. Maybe just luck, I dunno.

One time I found a Russian olive thorn in the tire. I traced the path, and it entered around the center of the tread, hit the liner, angled off to one side and punctured the tube. I don't know how long it had been in the tire, and maybe it would have caused a flat with the Schwalbe as well. The whole thing could be luck.