Puncture patches

AAG

HI,
I got a puncture last night and had to finish the last two miles on foot because like a fool i didnt have a repair kit on me,
so with that i need to buy one, but would the park tool glueless patch kit, be any good to hold in 105psi otherwise ill have to carry a tube.
Or can anybody else recommend a decent glueless kit.

Thx

moonshine

Carry a couple of spare tubes..
Patch your tubes at home with a cup of tea in front of the tv.

sungod

carry a spare tube for the first puncture

carry one of these for the rest...

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rema-tip-top-tt ... epair-kit/

...all in a tiny box, rub tube with sandpaper, smear on vulcanising fluid, wait a minute, stick on patch, burnish with the rounded corner of the box, done

only takes 2-3 minutes to put a patch on, for road pressures it's reliable and the patch will last indefinitely

i've tried glueless ones, but long term i found them unreliable, especially on a tube that might spend weeks in jersey pockets getting rained on etc., first the edges peel, then the whole patch comes off, which you only discover when you need the tube

whereas tubes with rema patches go through the pocket-tyre-patch-pocket shuffle many times, and there's no problem with the older ones separating

thistle_

+1 for the Rema patches.

I've found them easier to use and more reliable than any others I've tried.

rolf_f

A couple of spare tubes are always worth carrying - hopefully then you'll never need the puncture repair kit. But it's still worth carrying one - they don't weigh much and you know you'll get home!

As for the patches - traditional every time. They really take seconds longer to fit than the glueless and are far more reliable; stronger than the tube. Glueless eventually fail so ultimately take longer as you have to replace them.

cycleclinic

I just fit a new tube and bin the old one on my road bikes. Seriously when tube are avaialble cheap why bother patching. Not every LBS charges £5.99 for a Conti or Schwable tube - I don't. Also the right tyres help prevent this puncture problem in the first place.

I have yet to find a glueless patch that work well on thin road tubes. I also find gluing patches on thin road tubes a faff that refuse to do. Pathing MTB tubes is a different and a more sucessful matter that this is the wrong part of the forum for that.

Simmo72

I'll go up to 2 patches on a tube. £5 a time v 10p and a bit of the world natural resource saved.
The park tool patches work fine for me and I pump up to 115. 2 tubes, a parktool patch kit and a cut out bit of tyre (after getting a side wall rip on some glass. Stick the tyre underneath and it will get you home).

rolf_f

thecycleclinic wrote:

I just fit a new tube and bin the old one on my road bikes. Seriously when tube are avaialble cheap why bother patching. Not every LBS charges £5.99 for a Conti or Schwable tube - I don't. Also the right tyres help prevent this puncture problem in the first place.

Errrm, because it's environmentally reprehensible, staggeringly wasteful and expensive and eyewateringly lazy - now pull yourself together and behave! Even cheap tubes are a nice pint of beers worth you are throwing away for the sake of a few moments work. Fine if you are are paid more than £36 per hour (ie five minutes work - if that - to save a £3.00 inner tube) but most of us are not.

And it isn't so much the tyres but how you maintain them and how you ride the bike that prevents the problem. I've run a pair of ancient Michelin World tours for a few hundred miles with no puncture resistant belt and no punctures.

bottom_bracket

Environmentally reprehensible? What piffle. Does anyone really get so many punctures on their £££ bike that they can't justify throwing a punctured tube away and replacing with a cheap replacement? Personally I have had just 1 puncture in my last 1000 miles, but to be sure I carry a small kit including multitool, levers, tube and Co2.

desweller

bottom_bracket wrote:

Environmentally reprehensible? What piffle. Does anyone really get so many punctures on their £££ bike that they can't justify throwing a punctured tube away and replacing with a cheap replacement? Personally I have had just 1 puncture in my last 1000 miles, but to be sure I carry a small kit including multitool, levers, tube and Co2.

So that's, what, 6 tubes a year? Seems fairly wasteful to me. Patching takes 10 minutes.

rolf_f

DesWeller wrote:

bottom_bracket wrote:

Environmentally reprehensible? What piffle. Does anyone really get so many punctures on their £££ bike that they can't justify throwing a punctured tube away and replacing with a cheap replacement? Personally I have had just 1 puncture in my last 1000 miles, but to be sure I carry a small kit including multitool, levers, tube and Co2.

So that's, what, 6 tubes a year? Seems fairly wasteful to me. Patching takes 10 minutes.

Not even that really - what? 2 minutes to locate the hole, 30 seconds to apply the glue. Make a cup of tea while the glue is drying and replace the patch (another 30 seconds). You'd struggle to spend 5 minutes on it.

And really, bottom_bracket is either careless or unlucky if he averages a puncture every 1000 miles but I stand by the "Environmentally Reprehensible" comment - there seem to be enough people on here eagerly reporting deals for 24 inner tubes (which would probably see me out with some to spare) to suggest that there is a lot of waste going on.

Great first post though - I think we can expect forum greatness from bottom_bracket........

bottom_bracket

firstly, I don't have time or inclination to do 6000 miles a year, more like 1000 to be honest, and I've only been back biking 18 months with 1 puncture in all that time so no, it's not 6 a year. It's been one puncture since I got back on a bike. My point was that disposal of 1 inner tube can hardly be termed 'environmentally reprehensible'. I stand by that comment Rolf, just because my opinion isn't the same as yours doesn't make it wrong.

I am relatively new but that wasn't my first post, I just re-registered to facilitate name change.

desweller

My commute = 13 miles per day (pretty short by most standards), i.e. 65 miles per week.
Plus a 50 mile ride at the weekend, 115 miles per week.

So 5520 miles per year, not including cycling tours or owt like that.

That's not a high annual distance by any means. 1000 miles per year is avg. 20 miles or an hour or so per week.

Ditching off tubes instead of repairing them definitely smacks of laziness to me.

bottom_bracket

Des, I wish I could commute on my bike but it's 70 miles each way... OK, maybe I do a bit over 1k a year but I'm something of a fair weather cyclist, some weeks 100 miles, some weeks nothing. If I was getting punctures I would repair, but I've only had one and that was my own fault for riding off road. I just carry a spare tube with me but haven't had to use it since the one incident.

Maybe I came across dismissive of repairs, I just found the way Rolf referred to their disposal quite extreme.

If I'm forgiven and can ask a serious question, would you say it's even worth taking a tube etc when riding on road with Gatorskins?

Simmo72

bottom_bracket wrote:

Des, I wish I could commute on my bike but it's 70 miles each way... OK, maybe I do a bit over 1k a year but I'm something of a fair weather cyclist, some weeks 100 miles, some weeks nothing. If I was getting punctures I would repair, but I've only had one and that was my own fault for riding off road. I just carry a spare tube with me but haven't had to use it since the one incident.

Maybe I came across dismissive of repairs, I just found the way Rolf referred to their disposal quite extreme.

If I'm forgiven and can ask a serious question, would you say it's even worth taking a tube etc when riding on road with Gatorskins?

Yep, always carry a tube and a pumb/co2. No tyre is puncture proof.

rolf_f

bottom_bracket wrote:

Maybe I came across dismissive of repairs, I just found the way Rolf referred to their disposal quite extreme.

It may have been but I also stand by it . If someone asked you to do something that would take five minutes and they'd give you a fiver for it, would you?

bottom_bracket

depends what they were asking me to do :shock:

rolf_f

Possibly that wasn't as well phrased as it might have been

And I was going to add "In any case if it was only five minutes I'd do it for free" - glad I didn't!