Originally Posted by
cbrstar
Well maybe I don't do as much cycling as you, or maybe I live in a part of the world with better roads. But I think I have had less then 10 flats in 30 years of cycling.
My flats have almost nothing to do with the conditions of the roads. They are all related to what is on the roads or on the places where I ride bikes. We have
goat heads throughout the area where I ride most and, if you don’t have them, thank your lucky stars. I occasionally get flats from glass and I occasionally get flats from wires off of steel belted tires. Cactus spines also take their toll.
My main point, however, is that flats aren’t something that is planned nor something that is uncommon.
The two instances where I got consecutive flats where both wheel related. One was the rim had a slight crack right at the weld. And the other the rim strip was old and had shifted and one of the spokes was rubbing against the tube. Another weird instance was that I still enjoy doing BMX racing. I had bought a brand new set of really hard to get high pressure tires that were $100cdn each but I used the old tube from last years race season. Well as I was filing it up to the 100psi the tube exploded!! it was like a shotgun blast going off by my head. My ears rang for a good 5 minutes, and worst of all the blast was so bad it actually ripped the bead off the tire and the tire was shot. So now when ever I buy new tires I also buy new tubes. Rubber sadly degrades and breaks down over time.
I can see some problems I can see with your tale about the blowout. Blowouts aren’t caused by a tube rupturing inside the tire. That never happens. If the tube were old enough that it were to crack in the tire and release air, it wouldn’t blow the tire off the rim. I’ve seen tubes rupture because of a bad rim strip and those are relatively quite “pops”, not loud bangs.
A very loud blowout is related to either the tube being trapped between the rim and the tire where it forces the tire off the rim and ruptures. That’s a very common mistake and is always user error. I’ve done it but I’ve never blamed the tire.
Your statement that you ripped the bead off the tire says to me that it could also be a defective tire. I have had blowouts on (supposedly) high quality tires that were the result of the tire just not staying on the rim. But the tire never experienced damage. I’ve also experienced cases where the fabric was inproperly cured or was improperly wrapped around the bead and slipped off. That
did result in tire damage. But, in both cases, the tube was not responsible for the blowout nor has a trapped tube ever resulted in tire damage.
Tubes don’t degrade in tires. The tire makes a really good barrier to most everything that would damage the rubber of a tube. I’ve pulled perfectly good tubes out of severely decayed tires from 1980s bikes. The tube, in some cases, was probably OEM. The tire was mostly just cord but the tube was fine.