Bike Forums - What are the top 5 mechanical problems that you are likely to face while on tour ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN (Post 23476730)

Years ago I had a fairly new tire, got a puncture, put in a new tube. A few days later, that tube was flat in about the same spot as the first one. I could not find the sharp thing in the tire that was causing the flat.

I cut one tube lengthwise on the inside part of the tube so that the cut tube went over my good tube to act like a tire liner when I put that into the tire. No more flats.

Quote:

Originally Posted by robow (Post 23476928)

I normally wouldn't want to waste a repairable tube for that but I'm sure that's a solid option at times. Thanks

Sometimes a flat in the same spot is caused by splitting of the rim tape at the large spoke holes in a double wall rim if that is a rigid fiberglass strip, I've had that come from the factory and replaced it with Velox.

Regarding tube as flat strip, absolutely; I didn't feel like spending on the harder plastic strips. I use an old tube, cut away the valve stem with as small a hole as possible, then flatten it and put the whole thing between the new tube and the tire, so two additional layers of rubber. Works great, drastically reduced number of flats, with periodic inspection I can usually spot shards of glass before they hit the good tube. A wood staple, tack, or nail will still go through.

What NOT to do: I was discarding some vinyl horizontal blinds, thought the semi-hard plastic strips would make good flat strips. After a few days of use, got a flat, pulled it apart, there were 10,000+ bits of plastic where the strip was. Thin vinyl under cyclic bending load has terrible fatigue strength. Fortunately I had a vacuum handy.