Sunday, January 29, 2012

My First Flat!

On Saturday I took a ride out to Jonesborough and back. It's not a long ride - around 12 miles or so round trip.




Not much to report on the ride. It was sunny and in the low 30's. I did spot a bike rack in the Woodcraft parking lot! That's the first bike rack I've seen on this side of town. Makes sense though, there's a bike lane along that stretch of road.




This morning I discovered that the Fuji's rear tire was flat! Completely flat. I hadn't noticed a problem when I was riding the day before, so maybe it was a slow leak? I pulled thd wheel off the bike and found this:




Can you see that? A teeny tiny little sliver of wire. It had poked through right in the center of the tire into the inner tube. So I pulled thd tire and tube off, found the hole and patched it with Slime Skabs .




This package had come with the Terra Trike and had been laying in my tool since.




They're quite easy to use. Just scuff up the area on thd tire where thd patch will go, peel off the patch and stick it on.




I've got her all back together now. We'll see how the patch holds up.

3 comments:

  1. I use something similar to patch my tires. It's made by Park and has the adhesive built into the patch. They're so easy to use.

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  2. My first flat (and second) were caused by that exact same thing.
    My flat occurred to my front tire while my bike sat parked inside while I drove my afternoon school bus route. My mechanics aired it up and I rode it home, then deflated it and found the hole on the inner tube by using a kid wading pool and looking for bubbles. I didn't find the cause until the replacement tube also developed a leak in the exact same spot. Then I used a trick I read about on bikeforums.net and found the wire- I ran a cotton ball along the inside of my tire. My fingers had missed it twice (I really did look carefully, I promise), but the cotton ball snagged on it and I used tweezers to pull out the wire.
    That's the only flat mishap I've had, I started commuting in September and before that rode semi-regularly since getting my birthday bike in February.

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  3. Wow! What a menace those little wires can be. Hope the skabs are holding up well.

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