Cycle punctures

[bizzard]

In the early days of motoring they used something like glycerine - fairly solid at normal temperatures, but liquid at higher ones - to fill tyres and make them safe from puncture. Unfortunately, tyres get warm in use, and motorists would get to their cars the morning after use to find that there was a flat spot which only disappeared when the tyre was warmed up after some time in use. It was not considered a success.

Interesting. Once or twice as a kid when my innertubes were just one big patchwork quilt and wouldn't hold air anymore and went down on a journey I've stopped and stuffed and packed grass or hay tight inside the tyre from the roadside to get me home.

[Alastair]

 

Is that really the reason?!

 

I've often wondered why we have pneumatic tyres. They seem unnecessarily complicated. One has to pedal harder or pay for more fuel with solid tyres then?

 

 

MtB

That's the reason, plus ride comfort.

 

I do a lot of cycling - 50mile-round trip to work 3 times a week and longer rides on weekends. Pneumatic tyres have much lower rolling resistance. Thinner tyres have less than thicker tyres.

[Captain Fizz]

Marathon +s are indeed a fine tyre! but for what they are intended! road touring not towpaths.

If you are riding MtB style bike, go to tubeless and re-dose with fluid every couple of months.

[Ssscrudddy]

Tubeless are a pita. Fine until you get a flat, then you need a compresseor to get them inflated again, a hand pump just wont do the job.

[MtB]

Marathon +s are indeed a fine tyre! but for what they are intended! road touring not towpaths.

If you are riding MtB style bike, go to tubeless and re-dose with fluid every couple of months.

 

How can going tubeless possibly help? We are discussing thorn punctures!

 

MtB

[nb Innisfree]

On the other hand if you've been and gone and run over masses of of broken razor blades or huge megga thorns which have ripped your tyre to shreds and destroyed it, proceed as follows.

Remove wheel. Remove remnants of tyre and save. Drape string of sausages all around the rim as a tyre substitute and tie off firmly. Make a nice little bonfire on towpath. Feed fire with the remnants of old tyre. Cook sausages over fire by slowly turning turning wheel in the flames. Cook until sausages are golden brown and all that horrid fat and grease they contain has expanded and firmed them up. If your a heavyweight cyclist cook well to make to make em stronger. Leave to cool down until grease and fat has solidified. Refit wheel to bike. Ride away gleefully on bike. If you get hungry stop and nibble substitute tyre.

Which sausages do you recommend?

[Jerra]

Which sausages do you recommend?

Cumberland its made in nice long lengths with no links so would work well!

[bizzard]

Which sausages do you recommend?

Well it depends on the bike and what size and width of the wheel rims really.

For example racing type bikes with skinny 27'' wheels would need a sausage like the skinny Richmond skinless or chipalata kind, well cooked to give em strength. Ordinary roadster bikes with 26'' wheels a medium sized sausage say Walls pork or pork and beef would do. but some of these sausages don't come connected together in a string so would have to be stuck to the rim with glue or baked hard onto the rim so that their own greasy fat glues em on. Machines like bloomin mountain bikes I suppose need something more strong and turdy though like the greasy Lincolnshire sausage, Richmond thick Irish or even the Cumberland sausages straitened out a bit. A long black sausage would be ideal if you can them specially made to be long enough and would at a distance look quite real being black, a tyre name like Dunlop or Palmers could be painted on their flanks to make them more realistic.

The jolly old Germans must have the get you home bicycle sausage or Wurst tyre well sussed I would think and be very professional at it. On the other hand they're a fussy old bunch and would not dream of a a get you home botch like this (terrible waste of sausages) Vie must haf everyting to ve zright and proper, its their law, most have very little improvisation skills or sense of humour and would dolefully walk home pushing their bike.

Edited March 6, 2014 by bizzard

[nb Innisfree]

I feel a warning is in order here. Be carefull how you fit and cook your bike sausages, if not they can be prone to blowouts, they're not called bangers for nothing...

[bizzard]

I feel a warning is in order here. Be carefull how you fit and cook your bike sausages, if not they can be prone to blowouts, they're not called bangers for nothing...

Indeed very true, that's why I recommended black sausage for mountain bikes because of there more solid texture and thick skin.

[nb Innisfree]

Indeed very true, that's why I recommended black sausage for mountain bikes because of there more solid texture and thick skin.

Also true of mountain bikers.

[bizzard]

Also true of mountain bikers.

Indeed its the chrome reflecting coloured sunglasses and the weird streamlined crash helmets that seems to be the trend that most of em wear that tickles me which makes em look like a gigantic horrific insect careering along and like a stick insect if they have long skinny legs whirling round.

Edited March 6, 2014 by bizzard

[SamKingfisher]

Stick a dozen haggis together for serious off road work.

 

Schwalbe marathons have been renamed btw. Now Schwalbe snickers.

[cereal tiller]

Stick a dozen haggis together for serious off road work.

 

Schwalbe marathons have been renamed btw. Now Schwalbe snickers.

Nice one Centurion!

[Neil2]

Cut the wire reinforcement from an old tyre and fit the rest of the old tyre inside a new tyre, thus doubling the thickness - it is what old boatmen I knew used to do.

Not just old boatmen. I happen to know first hand that Scottish Tour de France rider Robert Millar did exactly this on all his training bikes.

Indeed its the chrome reflecting coloured sunglasses and the weird streamlined crash helmets that seems to be the trend that most of em wear that tickles me which makes em look like a gigantic horrific insect careering along and like a stick insect if they have long skinny legs whirling round.

When I started cycling if you wore anything other than black from head to foot you were mercilessly ridiculed as some sort of dangerous deviant. The mortality rate was rather high in those days though.

[MtB]

Indeed its the chrome reflecting coloured sunglasses and the weird streamlined crash helmets that seems to be the trend that most of em wear that tickles me which makes em look like a gigantic horrific insect careering along and like a stick insect if they have long skinny legs whirling round.

 

I laways think they look like haliens from outer space. A bit like those mocked up haliens (made of chicken giblets) being chopped up for the cameras in that Roswell alien post postmortem 'documentary'..

 

MtB

[Alex&Derek]

 

 

But how much (if any) summer towpath riding is included in your 18 months? I never had puncture problems either until I started regularly riding towpaths.

 

MtB

 

Mike, I ride the towpath at least 3-4 days per week all year round. Often the reason for punctures isn't the tyres but the pressure people run them at (or lackof). Mind you, I'm lucky that at 65kg and running on fairly high (for Marathon+) pressure of 80psi front, 90-100psi rear I'm yet to puncture a pair.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Alex&Derek