01
New tube first
Every time. A patch is what you use when you are out of tubes, not instead of one. Patches are a limp home, not a repair.
New tube first ●Do not pinch the tube ●
Find out why it flatted ●Carry it every ride ●
New tube first ●Do not pinch the tube ●
Find out why it flatted ●Carry it every ride ●
Four rules
Read this
part twice
02
Do not pinch the tube
Pinch it and you are now using that patch kit that barely works, on the side of the road, in the dark. Levers go on, thumbs go off.
03
Use YouTube
Watch someone do this three times before you ever need it. Then do it in your driveway. The road is not where you learn.
04
Get GP 4-Seasons
Continental Grand Prix 4-Season tires. Put them on and you do not have to read the rest of this unless you do something stupid.
The whole job
Find out why
it flatted
Changing the tube is the easy part. Anybody can change a tube. If you do not find the cause you will flat again in four miles and you will deserve it.
More often than not the cause is inside the wheel and it was put there by whoever built it. Rim tape shifted off a spoke hole. A spoke end poking through. A burr on the rim. A tube pinched under the bead at assembly. Bad tape, cheap labor, a factory in a hurry. That is where most flats come from.
You are lucky when the road did it. Glass and thorns are honest. Look for the honest cause first, and when you do not find one, start suspecting the build.
Outside of the tire, inside of the tire, the rim tape, and the tube itself. A hole on the outside of the tube means the tire. A hole on the inside means the rim. That is the witness line, and it tells you which problem you actually have.
Stay out of the gutter. Cars sweep glass to the curb, and that is exactly where you are riding if you are not paying attention.
Not the repair
First six steps.
Get them over with.
- Do not scream. Do not cry. It is a flat tire. You get one loud word, then you are done.
- Estimate sundown with your fist. Arm straight out, stack fists between the sun and the horizon. One fist is about 15 degrees, roughly an hour. That is your clock.
- Expect to lose cell service. Check your bars now while you still care. Assume nobody is coming.
- Get the bike 10 feet off the road and into the shade. You are about to kneel on the ground for 12 minutes. Do not do it in a traffic lane.
- Yell at your partner for not calling out the glass. They saw it. They went around it. They said nothing. Ten seconds, then drop it, because you still need their wheel.
- Hope the seat camera got it. Footage is the only way to win the argument from Step 5.
Ten steps
The work
Red is not the repair. If you do not know how to run a tire lever, or get a tire off a rim and back on it, stay home. That is not a road lesson and it is not on this page. What is on this page is the part people skip.
- Small ring, smallest cog before you pull the rear wheel. Slack chain, clean drop.
- FIND THE CAUSE. Two fingers slowly around the entire inside of the tire, slow or you will open your hand. Then the outside tread. Then the rim tape, every spoke hole, looking for a shifted strip, a burr, a spoke end coming through.
- Air in the dead tube, find the leak by ear. Hole on the outside of the tube means look at the tire. Hole on the inside means look at the rim. That tells you which problem you actually have.
- If you want to give up, give up. Not everybody wins. Not everybody is a winner. Not everyone can get things done.
- If you don't feel like doing any of this, grab a rock. Nature doesn't punish evil, it punishes the weak. Get a fist size rock, maybe while holding the rock, they will volunteer their bike to you. When they do, take off; they're probably better at changing tires anyways.
- New tube, two or three pumps of air in it first so it is round. Flat tube pinches.
- Pressure. If you do not know what a good tire feels like under your thumb, you should not have come out today. Another reason to stay home. Nobody carries a gauge. Underinflated is what pinch flats you, overinflated bounces off the road, and your thumb knows the difference or it does not.
- CO2: head on, seat it, one steady burst. Do not grab the bare cartridge, it will burn you cold. One 16g does one road tire, once. Carry two, because you will blow the first one by accident.
- Decorate the dead crow or the deer skeleton with your discarded tube and all the little pieces of trash from your kit, because you didn't take the time to unwrap everything before you went on your ride.
- Ride 200 yards, stop, squeeze the tire. Slow leaks show up right away.
Field repairs
When the tire
itself is cut
Dollar bill
Carry a few. A cut in the casing lets the tube bulge out the wound and blow. Fold a bill into a couple of layers and lay it between the tire and the tube, over the cut. The bill holds the tube in. Run lower pressure and get home. A Tyvek race number or a gel wrapper works too, a bill just always fits in a jersey.
Stuff the tire
If the tire is destroyed and the tube is gone, pack the casing full of leaves, grass, plastic, whatever is in the ditch. It takes a while and it rides terrible. It also gets you home instead of standing there. Do not brake hard, do not corner, just roll.
Let the air out at home
CO2 slow leaks out through the rubber. The tire will be soft the next morning and you will think you have a slow leak and that you did not fix your flat. You did fix your flat. You just do not know physics or chemistry. Let it out and pump it up again.
Tape a spare quick link
Small piece of electrical tape, under the top tube, forget about it. Costs nothing. I have never broken a chain and I have never not been able to fix one.
Carry it.
Every ride.
The kit is bulky and it is not fun to carry. Carry it anyway. Do not be the silly goose with a flat story. I have never not been able to fix a flat.
What goes in the bag
The kit
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Continental tubes, 700x25-32c | One for a short ride. Two for a century. Size them to the tire you own. |
| Pedro's Tire Levers, 2-pack | Yellow. They do not snap. |
| GIYO mini pump, Schrader + Presta | Slow. Never empty. This is the one that always works. |
| Genuine Innovations AirChuck, 16g | TWO cartridges. You will blow the first one by accident, because you never use it. |
| Park Tool GP-2 Super Patch Kit | For when the tubes are gone. Not before. |
| SUPVOX 48pc glueless patches | Backup to the backup. |
| Three $1 bills | Folded and laid between the tire and the tube to cover a cut in the tire. |
| Spare quick link | Taped to the frame. Match your chain speed. |
GP 4-Season
Continental Grand Prix 4-Season.
A year, no flats
Tubeless works. I ran high volume tubeless for a year, very light casing, and when I finally pulled the tire it was full of holes. Never flatted once. Not one. The sealant closed every one of them while I kept riding and I never knew it happened.
If you disagree
Go to sheldonbrown.com. Highly technical, knows everything, always right, literally. I have not read it and I do not care what he thinks. The flats page is sheldonbrown.com/flats.html.
One last thing
Make sure your romantic interest is out there with you. Nobody likes you being on rides this long. And if you are not with them, check the back door for fresh footprints when you get home.