tyre cuts

Sprool

After last weeks gruelling Big G sportive in bad weather round the yorkshire wolds, I found 3 quite deep cuts in my rear tyre, and one in my front. Suffered only one puncture - picked a razor sharp shard of flint out of the tyre picked up along a section of road where about 6 other cyclists all got punctures. Tiny white flint shards spilling from people's 'gravelled' driveways. Anyway on to the point - these cuts - should i look to replace the tyre now, some are quite deep, though only 3 or 4 mm long, or are they just surface blemishes? Tyres are Conti GP 4000s, looks like I got off lightly, maybe due to the resilient build of the tyres.

itboffin

deflate your tyre and pick out everything, anything that's made its way through to the canvas patch it from the inside with a proper glue patch, i'd say anything bigger than .5 cm if repairable would go on my pub bike.

Sprool

Thats cool, I aspire to have a pub bike

sungod

tread cut is not usually an issue, the tread is 'only' there to provide grip and protect the fabric carcass that gives the tyre it's strength

if the carcass is cut through...

the tube can be abraded on the rough edges, this is more of an issue with latex tubes though, the tube may even push right through a cut and then pop

if the cut is large enough the tyre will bulge at that point, this is really where you need to decide whether to bin the tyre or fit a 'boot' (reinforcing patch), but a really big cut means binning the tyre

gp4000s compound cuts quite easily, especially in the wet, but i've got these on my commute bike and have some quite large tread cuts, it makes no difference, i pick out any glass/flints, and ride the tyres until the wear indicators say it's time to change