Plagued by punctures

Noel PT

I am at my wits end! I have had my new bike for about two months and I have been plagued by punctures since I bought it.

I get a punctures every second or third trip to work and on the last two occassions I have had two in one trip.

I had checked everything, tire pressure is perfect, there is no old debri stuck in the tires and the tape on the rim is still perfect.

I am a bit more chunky than I should be but surely it should be able to deal with my extra weight.

I have Continental Race tyres that came standard. I have since changed them to the Speshi Armadilo Front and the toughest Conti I could find on the rear. I wanted to test something new, but today I punctured the new tougher conti. So I am stumped !!!

Any advice or tips would be great. All but one of the punctures have been to the rear.

adifiddler

Do you know what has caused each of thees punctures?

Noel PT

No idea, I checked the tire each and everytime but there was nothing stuck in it on any occassion.

adifiddler

check your tires by gently running your fingers around the inside the tire, you will feel if anything is coming through. Often people mend the puncture and look for the offending item on the outside of the tire, when they dont see anything they put it back on, often the offending item is still there and takes a couple of days to work through the inner tube.

Are you riding up curbs? If so you might be getting compression punctures.

t_rifles

Were they on the wheel side of the tube? I had this a lot and even though there was no obvious sharps I replaced the rubber rim tape with a cloth tape. Fingers crossed a few quid well spent.

Noel PT

I will double check the inside, but I dont do pavements, way to scared of damaging a rim.

Noel PT

Tyre side of the tube, but at this moment I am prepared to try anything. Gettin really tired of pushing for miles

adifiddler

When i get a puncture i full deflate the tube, remove one side of the tire run my fingers around find the object, i make a mental note of where it is and then remove it, sometime this has to be done by pushing it back through the tire. Then i pull out that part of the tube and can often see the puncture without having to re-inflate the tube. This saves a lot of time. Before re-placing the tire i run my fingers around the inside again just to be on the safe side.

adifiddler

Noel PT wrote:

Gettin really tired of pushing for miles

carry a spare tube and pump then you wont be pushing

Noel PT

I do carry a spare, but I have twice had two punctures on one trip.

Hairy Jock

Get yer self a pair of Conti GatorSkins and keep them pumped up hard.

Noel PT

I just bought them and got a puncture on the rear pumped to 120psi. I think I just got a fat ass.

Noel PT

I know some mountain biking guys that wrap an old tube around the existing tube to help with a bit of extra thickness. Has anybody tried this on a road tyre? Would it be advisable?

domtyler

Can you describe your road positioning? I.e. which part of the road to you cycle on? Do you use cycle lanes/paths?
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Suzuki Gn Series History

buddha

Try fitting some tyre-liners. Worked wonders for me.
I use Mr Tuffy liners on my roadie and mtb. Only around a tenner for both wheels. And the added weight is negligible IMO.

The BIG GT

Ride off-road!!

No kidding! I ride a slick-shod, rigid MTB as a commuter and I used to get many more punctures riding on the road than when I rode off-road!

All sorted now as I use 'slime'-filled inner tubes. I very rarely get a puncture now and, even if I do, spinning the wheel and re-inflating sorts the problem completely!
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nmcgann

Marathon+ orAll-condition Armadillos (back and front) usually spell the end of frequent p*nctures for commuting.

There are a few other tyres that some people have good experiences with, but not as universally good as the M+ or 'dillos.

Neil

Cunobelin

I have had a aimilar problem in the past.

From past experience:

Take off the tyres and refit so that a specific letter of the "name" on the tyre is aligned with the valve this will give you a reference point. Then get some tippex!


Next time you hava a puncture remove the wheel and lay on a flat surface. Keep the orientation of the tube and tyre. Tippex the inside of the tyre and the side wall where the puncture occurred. Now continue as normal.

If the puncture is always in the same place on the external side then you have something in the tyre or even a fault.

If it is in the same place ontheinternal side it could be tome to look at the spoke heads.

Punctures can be caused on the inner side by a rough spoke nipple, a protruding spoke, or the tube "herniating" into a recess if thespoke is recessed. Try two layers of a quality rim tape to alleviate this.

Gambatte

Tubeless, or slime?

cupofteacp

Noel

Are you cycling in the gutter?

Golden Steed

Noel PT wrote:

I do carry a spare, but I have twice had two punctures on one trip.

Carry two spare tubes then...

alfablue

Sorry, many will disagree, but my excperience with Conti's (even ones with an anti puncture guarantee) is very poor - the rubber compound seems to be very soft and both attracts penetrating stuff and wears out fast. Since swapping to Specialized All Conditions Pro's I have had zero punctures. (I ran them puncture-free before trying Conti's as well, with no punctures - the treads eventually started to seperate after 4 years, which is fine, and foolishly tried a selection of conti's for a change - waste of time).

Whilst you will find many swear by Gatorskins you will find equal numbers (judging by a year reading the C+ forum) that have regular punctures with them - giving them a tough sounding name is about all they have done to make them puncture resistant.

Tariq

The same thing happened to me from Jan-Mar this year. I kept getting one puncture each week and I was very angry! I posted on here and was told to check tyre etc, I did and found nothing. Then one day my young daughter thought it was a good idea to put sellotape on the tyres. As I was taking it off I noticed a thorn, would you beleive it, I never saw it during all those really close inspections.

Since removing it I have had five months without a puncture.

baggytrousers

I used to get regular punctures until I fitted some tyre liners and "Slime" I think I've only has one puncture since last November

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/ProductDetail.a ... re%20Liner

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/ProductDetail.a ... %20Sealant[/url]

baggytrousers

I've used tyre liners and slime for the last 12 mths and I've only had one puncture since that needed attention

Clever Pun

I used to get punctures all the time cycling the river lea navigation after they started sprucing it up for the olympics.... at first they put tarmac down and that was great, they they put shingles? (is that the right word???) which basically had the effect of riding over broken glass for a couple of miles and I was getting a p*ncture a day practically... in the end I started cycling on the road... I've since bought a road bike with armadillos and had one p*ncture in 4000 miles and I think that's because the tyres needed changing...

so in summary, don't cycle over sharp things and use armadillos and you'll be fine, unless your wheel is fecking you about... in which case follow the advice above

Tynancp

re OP

way way too many punctures, with it being a new bike my guess is the tape on the wheel is shit

I had that once, redo it yourself with electrical tap

Zatoichi

From the correspondence in the forum it appears you normally inflate your tires to 120 psi?

The maker MAY say that your tires are rated up to 120, but if you are doing a normal ride for commuting on city streets that's WAY too high a pressure. A 160-pound rider should normally run about 100 psi in the rear and around 95 psi up front when on 700x23C tires.

Yes, bicycle racers will (sometimes) run their tires at very high pressure to reduce rolling friction. But those racers are not running on potholed city streets. And if they are pros there's a full time mechanic changing tires each race for them. Pros will also reduce their tire pressure if they have bad road conditions.

If you weigh more than 160 lbs, you should probably increase the size of your tires. Most times you can easily mount a 25 or 28 mm tire on the same wheel that's carrying a 23C tire. Without running into clearance problems or readjusting your brakes.

I saw some great advice on http://www.roadbikerider.com about tire inflation. They suggest running at LOWER pressures to get a smoother ride, better traction, and reduce the number of flats. I've been doing this for a year now and get a longer life from my tires too. I'm a 150 lb rider and I normally inflate my 700x23C tires to 90 - 100 lbs. And I'm riding on kevlar-belted tires that are rated to 125 psi.

If you are riding a city commute on nasty potholed streets with trash and debris on the shoulders (eg a typical Houston, TX street), I'd suggest a fat-tired hybrid for your commute. Check the tire pressure recommendation on those fatties and you'll see a max pressure of 75 - 90 lbs.

I've tried slime in my tires and will NEVER use it again. It doesn't work reliably. And a tire that's filled with that junk can't be patched.

Take a look at Sheldon Brown's web site for more information: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tires.html

flyingfish70

Noel PT wrote:

I am at my wits end! I have had my new bike for about two months and I have been plagued by punctures since I bought it.

I get a punctures every second or third trip to work and on the last two occassions I have had two in one trip.

I had checked everything, tire pressure is perfect, there is no old debri stuck in the tires and the tape on the rim is still perfect.

I am a bit more chunky than I should be but surely it should be able to deal with my extra weight.

I have Continental Race tyres that came standard. I have since changed them to the Speshi Armadilo Front and the toughest Conti I could find on the rear. I wanted to test something new, but today I punctured the new tougher conti. So I am stumped !!!

Any advice or tips would be great. All but one of the punctures have been to the rear.

I suffered the same problem then i changed to Bontrager hard case tyres and have not had a single puncture since. That was 18 months ago, i have even dug broken glass out of the rear tyre.

jumbolugs

A previous poster mentioned the possibility of protruding spoke nipples - good point. Another possible cause of repeat punctures is a gash in the sidewall of the tyre. (Tube balloons out thru the gash, gets pinched, and the result is a puncture.) It only needs to be a very small gash - just a couple of mm or so is enough.

Another one that I have experienced is a dislocation in one of the rim joints - causing a sharp protrusion which snags the tube - easy to find if you run your finger around the inside of the rim on each side. I had one of these and managed to fix it by bending the rim back out again at the point where it was dislocated. It was an old rim, to be fair - probably suffering a bit from metal fatigue.

dondare

I had this problem a few years back, a puncture every trip no matter what I did. Eventually I bought new rims and that did the trick.
Punctures can be solved by using Schwalbe Marathon Plus which don't let anything through, but sometimes it is the wheel itself which is causing the problem, in which case the holes in the tube will be on the surface that contacts the rim, not the tyre.