Bmmonahan

New to AZ. Getting a lot of flats from goat heads on our road bikes. What is the best solution to prevent this?

tire liners?
slime like stuff in tubes?
tires with Kevlar?
tubeless?

thank you for the suggestions.

Bmmonahan

Ah, got it, found an older thread that gives me some good ideas.

locolobo13 

They're a lot of them this year. Some places worse than others. Look for them in the sandy soil along the road. Check the tires before remounting. Especially after riding/walking thru dirt.

Nothing works 100% for me. I buy thorn resistant tubes, heavy duty tires and let it go at that. Good luck.

Lemond1985

Tires with a very thick casing help, as well as having the surface of the tire as "tough' and impervious as possible. Panaracer makes some very thick tires for fixies that fit this description.

Thick tread is good, since If you had a casing that that's thicker that the length of the thorns, like a car tire is, you could ride through them all day without any problems. But that's probably impractical for a bike. And having a tough surface is also important, because for every thorn that penetrates, there probably are 2-3 that get stuck to the sides of the tires but don't go in. And if you have a non-sticky tire surface, that will help avoid picking them up at all.

Howard70

If you can go tubeless with sealant that's been my salvation here in New Mexico. I've shifted to dirt from riding road and the goat heads are epic. Just for fun I quantified the sealed thorns (99% goat heads) in a tire I removed recently. About 5,000 miles on the tire - 80% dirt two-track along irrigation ditches in the Rio Grande Valley. 350+ sealed thorns and 10 DynaPlugs (the tubeless tire repair system I use). I can't imagine what that would have been like with tubes!

If tubeless with sealant won't work for you, there are some riding habits I picked up when I was a roadie here. Try to stay in the portion of the roadway swept by automobiles - to the degree that you can with the traffic. On bike trails stay away from the dirt shoulders at all costs - the vines grow there and one pass through a patch when the goat heads have hardened up can yield 40 to 50 thorns in a tire! We did that on our tandem many years ago.

Some New Mexico riders used to use what they called "The System". Basically take an old 23mm tire and cut off the beads. Insert that modified strip into a 28mm (maybe a 25mm?) tire then mount that combined tire with a regular tube. The matriarch of the Lobo Ride (she knows who she is!) used to keep the group moving and leave any rider with a puncture who wasn't using "The System." Puncture a tire while using "The System" and the group could wait for you! Those were the days....

Howard Snell

albrt 

I've had the best luck with cheap black nylon Kendas. The expensive stuff with kevlar and whatever doesn't work for goatheads. On my Brompton, which is a tire size Kenda does not make, I made my own liners out of old heavyweight innertubes. Thickness seems to be what matters, not hardness.