Fixing Punctures / Puncture Repair / Exploding Tubes

Cool - you lot stand around wasting time whilst I get on and ride my bike; I've never, ever had a patch fail. Nor did my father so far as I can recall, and he raced and rode club for 50+ years.
Still, you know best.

I'm sure there are people we can find you in order to help you cope with this shocking revelation. www.theypickonmypatchingtechniquesupportline.com

I swap tubes when out on the road and repair punctures at home so I'm faster than you anyway.

I'm getting massive de ja vu on this whole discussion..

I'm sure there are people we can find you in order to help you cope with this shocking revelation. www.theypickonmypatchingtechniquesupportline.com

I swap tubes when out on the road and repair punctures at home so I'm faster than you anyway.

Of course you are; you know everything there is to know, and are more accomplished in all aspects.

You'd have to repair them at home, given how much time you waste ficking about with a task so quick and simple that even a complete retard can have it done in seconds. Probably pop them on the radiator overnight to make sure the fix is "durable" no doubt.

http://www.theypickonmypatchingtechniquesupportline.com/

There is help available. Don't feel alone.

Probably pop them on the radiator overnight to make sure the fix is "durable" no doubt.

i actually bake mine in the oven. can't puncture liquids!

Of course you are; you know everything there is to know, and are more accomplished in all aspects.

Now that's a silly statement, but your strop does sound rather like that of a pubescent child so I will amuse it's just hormones.

Wise precaution. Get Hippy to help you drill out and tap the hole, before you screw in the lazer-cut threaded preliminary patch prior to the initial survey and scope-of-works assessment.

can't you just accept your method works for you but goes against every manufacturers recommendations so we can get the fuck out of this thread.

Now that's a silly statement, but your strop does sound rather like that of a pubescent child so I will amuse it's just hormones.

Now that you mention it, my 7 year old can patch his own tubes without even understanding that this level of utter bollox can even be talked about the DIY equivalent of falling of a log.

can't you just accept your method works for you but goes against every manufacturers recommendations so we can get the fuck out of this thread.

Oddly enough, my tube of solution and patch sheet don't have any "recommendations" or even instructions on them. Unwisely, the probably assume anyone bright enough to get to the shops to buy them can work it out.

Glad that you have clearly researched "every" manufacturer, so you'd just be talking shite.

jesus wept.

Anecdote != evidence.

Tommy / hippy speaks truth, so does bigtwin.

Tommy's truth seems more widely applicable, since it is based on lots and lots of observations and theory of how vulcanising solution works, whereas bigtwin's is based on only his own observations. A lot of them, but still a smaller sample size than the population of materials scientists who have pondered rubber adhesion.

Pay your money (time) and take your choice.

Me, I wait a bit. Bigtwin, he don't. Fair nuff.

it did get awfully confusing for a moment there.

hehehe

Hi, had the misfortune to get a puncture in the snow yesterday. Then, the valve broke on my replacement tube - talk about bad luck, or perhaps the cycling Gods were trying to send me a message.

Fortunately, I managed to repair the punctured tube (by no means a given) and got home. I think I'll carry 2 tubes with me from now on.

Anyway, in an effort to save some pennies, I was just wondering if anyone can recommend some DIY puncture repair patches?

I think I may have tried bits of an old inner tube in the past but not had much success - any thoughts? I also heard denim could be used but I'm not so sure...

My local bike shop sells 6 patches for £1. How cheap do you want them to be?

Save money? Patches are one of the cheapest things on the planet - definition of not worth the hassle, you KNOW they won't work and will be a pain in the arse like no tomorrow. Don't do it.

I just bought some of these: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rema-tip-top-puncture-repair-patches/

Although I stupidly threw away all the rubber cement I'd been collecting, a few weeks ago.

these work well rather well, tried them last Saturday, was quite surprised

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/park-tools-puncture-repair-kit-super-patch/

I just bought some of these: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rema-tip-top-puncture-repair-patches/

Although I stupidly threw away all the rubber cement I'd been collecting, a few weeks ago.

+1 Rema

these work well rather well, tried them last Saturday, was quite surprised

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/park-tools-puncture-repair-kit-super-patch/

I found they fail after a while at high pressure.

http://www.lfgss.com/post1699063-504.html

^ I've used the Park Tool patches with no probs, just ensure to stick on flat - any small crease or air bubble seems to increase chance of failure. Thought they'd be a 'get home' option, but have left them in place on road and mtb tubes with no long term failure.

To chip in on earlier handbags:
I let the vulcanising solution dry a bit. Not aware of any brands that are to be used 'wet'.

I just remembered...Tesco sell them very cheaply.

My father taught me how to make my own puncture repair kit when I was a young lad and, with the odd adaption down the years, it's stood me in good stead ever since. I once once asked him who'd taught him the technique and got a 'black ear' (his word for a clip round the lughole) for my troubles (he was a somewhat macho and truculent coal miner from Glyncorrwg village in deepest South Wales... they breed them to be proudly self-reliant in those parts, so my question was probably perceived by him as a slight to his self-sufficiency skillset). Anyway, he rode everywhere on Bessy, a bike he built himself, mainly from cast iron trussle rods salvaged from a Victorian bunkbed frame (it weighed a tonne!), held together with bell rope and tanner's glue (i have some photos if anyone's interested). The tyres were constructed using an incredibly durable compound made of refluxed canvas, woven coal flax and tesselated pig iron shards (no doubt pilfered from the slag heap belonging to the puddling forge in the next valley). (Interestingly Bridgestone founder Lyoto Machida, an adolescent at this time who was in Britain touring London music halls with his boarding school's production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Makido, was evacuated to Glyncorrwg on the eve of the Second World War, and I've always wondered whether he met, and swapped notes on tyre production, with my father... if so, where are his royalties, Machida!!!). The compound was so tough that his tyres rarely punctured, so when Ol' Bess "opened 'er mouth' (as he called a puncture!) it was always a bit of a special occasion on the boat (we lived on a canal barge). We didn't have electricity back then, so he'd let off a few naval flares, which created this ethereal glow all around the boat that was truly magical. Mother would cook up a batch of treacle taffy and my brother and I would sing hymns while father would winch Bessy onto the roof of the aft cabin, up-end her and lay her out on a pages torn from The Rhonda Echo. He used a pudding slice and skillet whisk to lever the tyre from the rim, then he'd hunker down on his hands and knees, take three or four huge lungfuls of air and, with the mouth of the valve clamped between his teeth, blow the tyres up like a balloon. It was me and my brother's cue to stop singing. You could hear a pin drop in the next valley as father listened intently for the tell-tale hiss of air. ("There's the snake!" he'd yell!) With the source of the leak pinched between thumb and forefinger, he'd press the hole onto a pre-prepared smear of bacon fat, bitchumen, locksmith's proofing and coal tar. This was to par-seal the hole while he readied the patch with beeswax. For the patch, father used a section of horse hide soaked in his own urin (i imagine this was cut from the corpse of a pit pony or knicked from the village slaughterhouse, but he used to tell us it was 'dragon skin', which, on reflection, was as much a reflection of his fierce nationalist pride as it was his vivid imagination). While the patch adhered itself to the drying glue, father and mother would join us in a few verses of the Welsh national anthem, with a few choice expletives about the English appended to the chorus and final verse. Then, in a final flourish worthy of the Great Soperendo, father would spin around on the spot like a dervish, then swallow dive into the canal. We'd all be screaming with excitement at this point, high on taffy mollases and - come to think of it - the calcium phosphate we'd inhaled from the debris trail left by the flares. He'd resurface, gasping for air, with a clump of canal weed in his teeth. He'd pass this to me and it was my solemn duty to 'seal the tyre proper wi' locks o' da mermaid's hair' as he called it. And that was it. Job done.All in all, it was a fascinating, almost ritualistic process, something that I think we can all learn a lot from.

hehe

I just bought some of these: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/rema-tip-top-puncture-repair-patches/

Although I stupidly threw away all the rubber cement I'd been collecting, a few weeks ago.

Hi cyclotron3k

you can get the cement seperately from wiggle aswell, 10ml tube so it'll last for ages aswell!