Preventing the Flat Tire

Lets discuss the flat tire. It’s going to happen and probably at the worst time possible. They can be a nuisance but there are quite a few preventative measures one can take to reduce their frequency. Knowing how to remove a tire and tube and execute a patch are the most needed mechanic skills any cyclist should master. In this post I will illustrate flat prevention, tools needed to fix a flat, and how to remove a tire and patch a tube.

Prevention – Personal experience shows that the following will certainly help to prevent flats:

Proper tire inflation – I hate pumping air into my tires but not as much as changing a flat. I make sure to check my tire pressure a couple times a week. It is quite common for you tires to leak a bit through the valve stem losing as much as 20 lbs of pressure in under 2 weeks. I’m one of those guys that loves to have rock hard tires that lessen the drag on the road. When tires loose pressure the rider becomes susceptible to pinch flats. They ride over a pothole and the resulting jarring causes the rim to bottom out on the hard riding surface causing small tear in the tube. Sometimes two small punctures can occur. The funny thing is that the result of being lazy and not inflating often gives you the opportunity to re-inflate your whole tube. It’s a nasty catch 22. Better to just hook up the old pump and make sure they are inflated to the correct pressure. A competent cyclist will do this before every ride.

Bike/tire selection – Choose the right tire for the riding you will be doing. I rode across the United States [NYC to Los Angeles] in 35 days on a Cannonade racing bike with 700c X 23mm tires. I had at least 40 pounds of gear all situated in my rear panniers atop that skinny little tire. I think I averaged around 2 flats per day. Understand I wasn’t really doing any prevention. While I am a competent cyclist I often do really stupid things that in retrospect remain unexplainable. Five years later I rode from Seattle to NYC in 30 days on a mountain bike with 1.25 inch slicks and tire liners. I think I go 3 flats. If you do the math the resulting 5 days difference was spent fixing flat tires….no thats not true…the prevailing wind and not having to ride across Pennsylvania probably accounted for 4 of those days; however; I lost a day just to repairing flats. I can’t think of a worse way to spend a day. Actually I can, but won’t go into that.

Tire liners – Tire liners are a savior. I hate that liquid slime crap and won’t even try it. Mr. Tuffy’s are awesome and I will not ride without them. If installed correctly they will prevent a good deal of flats from occurring.

Tire care – Every time I fill my tires with air I take a good look at the surface of the tire. You would be surprised at how much debris will actually embed into a tire and not cause a puncture. One trick is to run a cotton ball on the outside of your tire and it will snag onto any sharpies that are sticking into your tire.

Smart riding – Um, it’s fairly obvious that you should be looking at the road but sometimes you need to look around at traffic, a pretty girl, the scenery, so you gotta do like a good bartender. have your head on a swivel. Constantly be looking at everything. Don’t ride over anything. Bunny hop things if you need to. If it doesn’t touch your tire it can’t cause a flat.

Okay so lets say you do all of these things and you STILL get a flat. No problem…because you have the tools to deal with it….right…you don’t? This short list of tools will help you to deal with a flat 98% of the time. On my first cross country trip my buddy rode a tube that had over 25 patches on it for thousands of miles. He finally discarded it after he lost a tire and the resulting blowout was unfixable. In only the biggest emergencies will I go for a tube swap instead of making a patch attempt. That being said I always carry a spare tube. My preference is to use a manual pump and traditional patch kit over the more convenient co2 inflator and self adhesive patch; however, in a downpour I have resorted to these quick fixes and they worked quite well. Even though I do not use the Slime liquid prevention system I included it as it is a popular product and friends swear by it. Have a look and buy here or make a list and visit your local bike shop:

Okay so now for the big question – How does one patch a tube?

Removing the tire and swapping the tube: In this stylish video the user shows the steps needed to remove a tire and replace a tube. As a die hard cyclist this is the hottest video I have ever seen. It takes great ability to make changing a bicycle tube sexy and CycleMaven does so with great aplomb. I was going to make my own video but after listening to her voiceover I had to adjust my bicycle shorts.

Executing a patch: While not nearly as entertaining as the above video I thought BikeWagon did a good job on explaining how to patch a tube. The best part is when he marks the puncture with a sharpie. I use a small piece of chalk that I keep in my patchkit. I like to leave the plastic layer on also.

So thats that. Ride with confidence!!!