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Saturday 3 October 2015

A slow leak

The front tire of my heavy bike had a slow puncture. Slow, but not slow enough to ignore. It needed reinflating every day.

So I turned it upside down, undid the nuts and pulled the wheel partially out. Partially, because it's wired in. I took the tyre off, and pulled the inner tube out. I noticed that it already had a patch, and when I submerged the tube, the bubbles were coming out of the patch.

I'm rubbish at patching inner tubes.

So I replaced it with one of my thick-walled inner tubes. In my experience, those just don't get punctures.

It was a huge struggle to get it in place; the thick-walled tubes are a lot harder to manipulate, but I think it's worth it. After much effort, I got it on, and after more much effort I got the tire back on. I've inflated it to 45 psi, and I've left it, to see if it's OK before I put the bike back the right way up.


3 comments:

  1. You missed a vital part: checking the tyre for thorn, or whatever, which caused it.

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  2. Remember, the bubbles were coming from the patch, which makes me think that the problem is that the patch has come loose, and probably wasn't done very well in the first place.

    ReplyDelete