Plagued by punctures

Do you know what has caused each of thees punctures?

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.

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.

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

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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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.

Noel

Are you cycling in the gutter?

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.

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]

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

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

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.