Yesterday morning I was cursing my brand new gatorskin tire as I was forced to stop halfway up the steepest hill of the day to change the tube. I was surprised I got a flat that quickly because I had heard so many good things about the tire and I had just put it on my new wheel over the weekend. I was sure I had caught something in a rough section of the shoulder where they are doing some construction, but I was disappointed because the Performance Kevlar tires I was running before had managed it quite well for several months. It wasn't until I got home that night that I noticed the remnants of a thin piece of wire stuck in the sidewall of the tire which I assumed had caused the flat and I remembered having the exact same problem with one of the Performance tires. Has anyone else had this problem with thin wire or have any idea how something so seemingly insignificant might puncture an otherwise indestructable tire.

I've had flats caused by wire or staples quite a few times---even with Specialized Armadillos; pesky stuff. I'm not sure where it comes from, but it seems to be lethal to tires.

By the way, I currently run Performance kevlars, and have been really impressed with them. I've only had like one flat in the past 4 or 5 months (commuting daily), whereas I used to get them several times a month with other tires I've used (including the Armadillos). And I only paid something like $13 each for them, when they were on sale. Go figure.

Gators suck. Way overrated. Had them, hate them. Want tough go with armadillos or Vittoria randonneurs.

Yeah, they are really good, but I hate the yellow sidewalls. They don't look good when they are new and then they get dirty. I'm not sure how good they are for skidding/skipping as I have just started doing that.

Yup, I've punctured from staples quite a few times. Being so thin, sharp and relatively strong, I think a staple will do in just about any brand of tire. Knobbies probably do better against them I would imagine.

just this week i had to retire (no pun intended) a kevlar tire i had been running for only a couple of months. problem was, about about two weeks after i bought the thing i got pushed off to the side of the road by an SUV and ran over a broken bottle hidden under some leaves. it ripped a hole in the tire big enough that i could feel the air rushing out of the tube, past the tire and a seemingly redundant mr. tuffy and onto my leg. not wanting to give up on the fairly expensive tire so quickly, i simply booted it as per the instructions in "How to Rock n' Roll." sadly, this only postponed the inevitable as the rip grew and grew. now i'm running a much cheaper tire with mr. tuffy. barring any more aggressively violent beer bottles, it should last at least as long as the kevlar thing.

The sidewalls are a point of failure on the Gatorskins, but I haven't had many flats because of it. The thing about wires and staples and any other thin, solid piece of metal is that it's going to go through better than a larger piece. I was watching an episode of Stargate and they showed how you could get through a bulletproof Kevlar vest with a tranquiliser dart, but not a bullet. Not the most scientific, but I think the theory is sound....

The tranquilizer dart through the Kevlar vest theory makes sense to me as well, I guess, but I don't understand how an inanimate object such as a staple could come to be lodged in the side of a tire. I mean, the dart would have to be shot at the vest at some velocity, but the staple was just lying on the street.

after only 3 weeks on the gators first real "san francisco pothole" left a small cut in the sidewall of my rear tire....i will not be buying another set...

Seconded!

If it was just the sidewalls! My gators got cuts in the middle of the thread area and a bunch of little chunks of tire are missing along the entire circumference.

I don't think that the kevlar extends to the sidewalls. I was thinking more of the fact that with the ones I've been running, I've had stuff go right through the contact surface. If it's a large piece of glass or something, it just gets stuck and I don't get a flat. If it's long and skinny, I get a flat. Also, the tire and it's rotation provide the velocity...

The shape of the staple can cause it to get turned up and pushed into the sidewall when you ride over it. Once I was riding along and heard an odd ting ting ting sound with at the front wheel. I stopped & found a staple sticking out of the front tire sidewall and it was hitting the fork with each rotation. Didn't leak until I pulled it out.

I like how you added a link to your hub which is SICK!

jeff

[QUOTE=justin79]new wheel QUOTE]

you didn't buy them at freewheel did you? my cut extends from the tread to the top of the sidewall...so not exactly the sidewall....

No not at the freewheel. got off the web. Freewheel has the Vittoria randonneurs which are bombproof and the Vittoria Rubino PRBs which are a little less beefy but ride very nice.

I've had a construction staple go through my 26x2.1 Panaracer Fire XC Pros. There's really not much out there aside from solid rubber tyres that can withstand those buggers.

Yup... a similar thing happened to a friend of mine on a ride last summer. And he was even running Mr Tuffy liners. As luck would have it, there were no bike shops open on the island on Sundays. We tried booting the tyre and using a patch to no avail. Eventually, we ended up overlapping strips of his liner to reinforce the boot. It worked but there was still a noticable bulge. He only had 500 miles on that tyre. At least we made it back.

i think that wire comes from car tires that blow out.

i have found a similar thin wire in my punctured tires/tubes once or twice.

Thank you. It obviously doesn't have anything to do with the thread, but I thought I'd show it off with the subtle link.

Wire caught at just the right angle will often defeat kevlar where glass and other obstructions fail, kevlar is fabric so anything thin enough can slip through occasionally. Kevlar still works too well to go back imho

Anyone reading this thread should keep in mind that all of our experiences are anecdotal, not statistically significant. In my (anecdotal) experience, the gatorskin's sidewall is less likely to fail vs. Armadillos or Vittoria tires. I quit Armadillos because of sidewall failures. The new model appears to have a different sidewall construction and is probably fine. The only Vittoria I used was a knobby cyclocross model, it failed at the sidewall prematurely it seemed, I never tried the Rando model. I guess the sidewalls of good tires are thinner than the tread area to save weight and because this area gets less wear, and is less likely to contact any wire, nail, etc.

One of my gatorskins was ruined when it was very new. Looking at the cut, it was obvious I had run over something very sharp. I think it was just bad luck, there is a large element of chance with bike tires and debris on the street.

The Kevlar puncture protection is a belt just under the tread part of the tire in most Kevlar tires. The sidewalls are not protected.

I have great success with the performance tires. The sidewall is thin and it needs to be thin. Just about anything will go through the sidewall. I did have some old Armadillos that were bead to bead (sidewall too) Kevlar protection. They were incredibly bumpy. They don't make that model any more. I don't think the Gator skins have Kevlar sidewall protection either, but I am not positive. Most Kevlar tires do not. This is normal for sidewalls to be fragile. The websites usually have cut away drawings showing where the Kevlar belts are located. You can feel it by hand in the performance tires. Just bend the rubber.

It is critical that sidewalls on bike tires be thin and flexible, it changes the speed of the tire (rolling resistance) and the comfort, and the handling. There is an overwhelming amount about this on line. The sidewall construction is analyzed a lot. In general the more expensive the tire, the thinner and more flexible the sidewall. (Fragile)

vittoria randonneurs are double belted!

could you give some details? Kevlar ? unkown? thanks.