2_i 

Good to know about the Armadillos! My situation was puzzling as I was riding for weeks across the area without any problems and then flats started coming at such a rate that I was getting afraid that I could run out of patches! I was desperate to figure out was going on and the culprit turned out to be a particular stretch of road leading to my workplace, where pavement was practically bombed out. Both cars and myself sought a smoother surface along the shoulder. I tied the flats to what I thought was an improved riding strategy. After I returned to suffering through the potholes, the flats went away. Still I looked the tires over both after getting to work and home, seeking the stuck goatheads just in case.

The tires were Marathons. I got Marathon Plusses since for the particular bike, but I am not sure about riding them and have not been yet back to the area where I suffered. I had one such tire on another bike and it was heavy riding. The size is 16" of a folder, so it is not that I shop around for one brand or another - must take what is available. Schwalbe is actually good in their offer across tire diameters.

rekmeyata

Those Marathons are good tires, probably better than the Specialized Armadillo All Condition tires, but the Marathon does weigh more but not much more, they should be able to handle thorns with no issues, back when I was going through my thing those Marathons were not around.

Racing Dan

Marathon+ is a Heavy tyre. Only use it if you MUST or on a bike that you absolutely can not be bothered patching. Last forever tho and IS bombproof.

rekmeyata

I think the Marathon plus is a bit of an overkill, but if they absolutely hate the idea of getting a flat, and they want the tire to last as least three times as long as a standard tire, then the weight may not be of much concern.

I do bike camping, and getting a flat on a loaded bike can be a real pain, I have to completely remove the panniers and all my strap on gear, not to mention if the flat is on the rear I have to deal with the mechanicals, which in it by itself is not a big deal but when combined with all the stuff it lends to the headache. I know I don't want to be pushing a heavy tire either, the Kenda Kwick Drumlin K Shield Plus tires that came with my bike weigh 1,600 grams EACH! That's a lot of weight, And the Marathon Plus is close to 1,000 grams a piece, so I decided to go to the Marathon Supreme which is only 600 grams apiece. I haven't been able to buy them yet due to a shortage from the Covid, but when they come in I'm getting a pair of those so I can reduce my rotational weight by 2,000 grams total. Kenda did redesign the tire that I have and the new one takes about 200 grams off the tire, but that's still a very heavy tire, it's the heaviest tire I've ever seen; I'm not sure why Masi decided to put a tire made for E-bikes on the Giramondo 700c bike which is pedal-powered, but it is a hard-wearing tire, I have about 2,000 miles of loaded miles and they have no signs of even beginning to wear.

cyccommute 

I’ve had very good luck for many decades with tire liners. I’ve had a few flats from them wearing on the tube but that doesn’t happen very often. The Marathon Plus (and like tires) have the same liner that is just sealed in the rubber of the tire. The plus side of the tire liners is that they can be used for dozens of sets of tires and aren’t necessarily tied to a particular tire.

I have been on rides where we had an epic number of flats...27 between 4 people...and I was the only one without a flat, including one person with tubeless. My wife got one of those 27 because I forgot to put a liner in one of her tires, the tubeless guy got 6 and one poor soul ended up with 20.

I mocked the Goathead Gods and ended up with 60 the next time I went into the same ride the next time I went. Since then I put on sacrificial tires (used ones from my co-op), tire liners, and Slime tubes. I haven’t even picked up a goathead much less gotten a flat after doing on a few different trips.

curbtender

Yes, there is the breaking point. A friend asked me to put new tires on his son's bmx. He brought it by a week later and said there was a problem with them. Of course there was, they were ridden through a field of star thistles. I showed his son what they looked like and gave him a don't go there.

2_i 

Ha! This sounds like a solution for me. I am afraid of getting stuck somewhere having only Marathon+ and suffer from the poor ride quality while I might not really need them for the particular area. Taking the liners along for a far-away venture does not seem that taxing - I take minor maintenance and repair items anyway. Is there any particular brand of the liners that one should choose? Are ultralight liners just as good? I anyway ride always tires that have some reinforcement but occasionally clearly not strong enough. Any supplementary liner advice? Thanks.

drlogik 

I agree with dsbrantjr. The only thing I would add is use the proper vulcanizing fluid and dust the tube liberally with talcum powder. This will prevent the tube from sticking. That's important if it has a patch.

rekmeyata

You're supposed to roll the tube not fold it when storing it in your saddlebag, ever notice how tubes come in the box? Why is that? because folds can lead to weak spots and cracks at the fold. So if you roll the tube it puts no stress on any patches either.

Slime tubes are ineffective with high-pressure tires, the stuff blows out of a hole at pressures exceeding 65 pounds, that was my experience using them.

I had goat heads penetrate Mr. Tuffy's as I had mentioned earlier. I have an experiment for you, take a Mr. Tuffy and try to push a tack through it, it goes through fairly easily. I tried that when I was trying to compare the Mr. Tuffy with a Panaracer Flat Away liner, I could not get the tack to penetrated the Flat Away liner. The other thing was that I could cut the Mr. Tuffy with a pair of scissors like butter but I was hurting my hand trying to cut the Flat Away. The disadvantage with the Flat Away is that it's a one tire liner, you have to put a new liner in whenever you get a new tire, and those liners cost $15 apiece. What I finally figured out was on my touring bike, my weekend bike, and on the commuting bike, is that I only put in the Flat Away liner in just the rear tire only because the front is easier to repair, and it costs less since I'm only using one. Also, the Flat Away is about 100 grams less in weight vs the Mr. Tuffy.

cyccommute 

I have never seen a tube rolled in the box. Every one of them that I’ve ever taken out of a box was folded in about 3” sections. While it is true that folds can crack, that takes a long time exposed to light and ozone. I have always folded tube and put them in a plastic sandwich bag. That’s all that is needed to cushion the tube and to avoid degradation.

Granted my tubes aren’t in my bag for all that long, considering the number of flats I do get.

I’m not a fan of Slime (nor of tubeless sealant, for that matter). The only time I use Slime is when I’m going off-reading in southeastern Colorado’s canyon lands. As bad as goatheads are here along the Front Range, they are ten times worse east and south of Pueblo. I don’t use them at any other time and I only use them on low pressure tires.

Nothing is perfect. As I pointed out above, the guy with tubeless...which is supposedly impervious to flats...got 6 of them on that ride. And I did get 60 punctures on my next ride to those canyons. But, generally, they are fairly effective, reusable, and relatively cheap because they can be used through dozens of tires. I like something I can reuse over a single use item even if it has a few downsides.

Chuck M 

I'm especially blessed because I haven't had a flat in years and that was two blocks from the house. I do carry a new tube, patches and an inflater in my saddle pack because I know things like bragging about not having flats will leave me 20 miles from home with a flat.

rekmeyata

Weird about the tube being rolled or folded, I use almost exclusively Specialized Ultralight Turbo tubes and they are always rolled, I also have used Vittoria tubes in the past and they too were rolled from what I remember, I can't recall what other brands I've used, but I can't recall finding any folded tubes. The only folded tubes I've ever got were the ones that were thorn resistant due to the thickness of the tubes which made it impossible to roll.

I wonder if a Panaracer Flat Away liner would work in a tubeless tire since they stick to the inside of the tire instead of just laying. I don't use tubeless tires so I can't experiment to find out, but it seems like they could work.

A few years back right after I got my Lynskey in 2013 I installed a Panasonic FlatAway liner in the rear on the brand new tire, about 4 or 5 rides later I cut my rear tire about 1/2 an inch that penetrated the cords of the tire, which I didn't find the cut until I did my usual after ride inspection, which meant of course the tire didn't go flat. So I dismounted the tire and I saw a larger darker spot on the Panaracer FlatAway liner and one very small on. I peeled off a small section of the liner and saw a 1/8th inch long cut on the inside of the tire so I booted the tire with a piece of Park Boot Patch and laid back down the FlatAway liner (I didn't bother looking at the small one from the inside). I inflated the tire then took some Super Glue I got at a hobby store (stronger stuff than the usual store-bought super glues) and filled in the cut (which I have to reapply about every other ride) but I rode that tire till it wore out without any further issues. When I went to throw away the worn-out tire I looked at the FlatAway liner and there were several dark spots on the liner that something had penetrated the tire and was stopped by the liner. The liner for some reason forms a dark spot whenever something hits it so it leaves a tall tale sign that it worked. Of course, no liner is 100% flat-proof, but I know that the FlatAway works better than Mr. Tuffy.

And the other thing about plastic liners like the Mr. Tuffy is that they do make the ride quality a bit harsher, whereas the Panaracer FlatAway is cloth and actually cushions the ride a bit.

I guess since the Panaracer FlatAway liner is a stick-on liner, a person could use both, a FlatAway and a Mr. Tuffy, that would all but guarantee no flats! Or use the newer lightweight Mr. Tuffy liner with the FlatAway liner. Not sure though how good the lightweight version of Mr. Tuffy is compared to the regular Mr. Tuffy liner.

DiabloScott

Rolling your tubes still creates two folds on either side of the tube for the entire circumference.
Yes, they frequently come rolled up - I submit that probably has more to do with packaging efficiency than quality control.
I just unpacked one to check. If it's not obvious, they folded it in half and then rolled it.

cyccommute 

The ones I use are the from all over the place. I currently have tubes from REI, Quality Bicycle Products, Specialized, and others. All of them are oblong boxes. A rolled tube wouldn’t fit in that kind of box. It would need a square box. I’ve seen few rolled tubes in bulk tubes but they are uncommon in my experience.

Theoretically. But the problem is the liquid of the sealant. I don’t know that you can mount a tubeless tire without sealant as most of them are leak air through the casing. Car tires are far thicker so they hold air better without a sealant. In other words, the liner might work to prevent punctures to a dry tubeless tire but the dry tubeless tire would leak enough air that they would go flat anyway.

People say that about the Mr. Tuffy but I’ve never noticed that much of a difference in ride quality. I have mounted tires without them and I really can’t tell if they are there or not. On the other hand, a tire like the Marathon Plus has the liner in it already so it’s not going to be that much different in ride than just using a Mr. Tuffy any way.

Your bringing up the Kevlar liner did remind me that I have tried them in the past. I seem to recall that the ones I used cracked and broke inside the tire. I think that’s what turned me off to them. That and the cost as well as single use nature. I think they worked well enough. On the other hand, I’m still using the Tuffys I got back then.

rekmeyata

Yeah, but rolling reduces about 90% of the folds, that's what mine look like coming out of the box too, and I simply return the tube to that type of roll before stuffing it into a thick plastic bag which then goes into the saddlebag.

cyccommute 

Okay, I think we got a failure to communicate here. When you say “roll”, I see this



When I say “fold”, I see what what DiabloScott has posted.

I’m not a fan of the roll like above because the the stem sticks out and pokes other things in the bag. “Folding” the tube with the stem on the inside cuts down on that problem.

curbtender

Wish those tubes could stay in there long enough to crack. If I don't use them, someone else gets them.

dscheidt

There are other ways to produce a cold vulcanizing bond. Park, and many others, use zinc dibutyldithiocarbamate or a related zinc thiocarbamate. This is the system that most automotive patch systems use. These won't show up on the SDS, for the same reason the rubber in cement isn't listed, because at the levels used, they're not a safety concern. But It's a perfectly acceptable system.

I pretty exclusively use Rema patches, purchased in bulk, because they're mechanically the best pataches around, but I use vulcanizing fluid made by someone else, because it's readily available at the auto parts store, and cheaper than buying little tubes of rema fluid. Works great.

Facebook just reminded me of this repair I did, five years ago, which is still in use. (so is the can of vulcanized fluid used, for that matter.)

2_i 

Every on-line bike part supplier and their brother carry Rema fluid in cans . It will last a lifetime for an individual cyclist provided it will get diluted a bit every few years.

rekmeyata

Even that roll has at least 3 folds that I can see. That's one of those new poly tubes, how the heck does the valve stem go into the tube? does it just screw in? It wouldn't seem that the poly would be strong enough to hold high psi and the air would just blow by the threading. I'm looking at it but it seems weird, I know it works, just seems weird.

cyccommute 

While you can do cold vulcanization in a bunch of ways, most of them are very slow. The thiocarbamates you are talking about are added to the rubber of the patch. They are called secondary accelerators and are used to activate the primary accelerator. In Rema fluid there is N-Ethylcyclohexylamine listed in the fluid in about 2% concentration. This is the primary accelerator that speeds up the reaction. The thiocarbamate is the sulfur source as well. Long ago I found something similar listed in the MSDS for the patch but Rema doesn’t have an MSDS for the rubber patches anymore. This article has a very good description of the process but it is rather techical.

While Rema patches are good, they are part of a system. The “vulcanizing fluid” from Park as well as several others don’t list the N-ethylcyclohexylamine in their MSDSs. They only list solvents. There is the possibility that they aren’t listing the primary accelerator in the fluid but most of the accelerators that would be use tend to be amines which are pretty nasty as a class. Additionally, many of the tubes of cement in kits that aren’t Rema are marked “rubber cement”. Many of the cans of patching fluid I’ve run across, such as Slime and Park, just list solvents. Some, like Xtra Seal Vulcan Cement, list solvent and natural latex. That’s rubber cement.

Even if the fluid from other manufacturers contains accelerators, the chemistry is between the accelerators is probably going to quite specific. Accelerator A in Fluid A is specific to Accelerator B in patch B. Adding Fluid C into the mix may not result in the same results because they are using accelerators that don’t work together. Without knowing the specifics of the chemicals in the different fluids, I wouldn’t trust that they are compatible. That’s been borne out by my experiences with more generic patch kits. The failure rate is higher with the other brands in my experience.

dscheidt

There's lots of environmental and work safety pressure to eliminate the use of cyclohexamine, and there are alternative chemistries that work just as well. the zinc thiocarmates require an activator, which is usually stearic acid, or zinc oxide in combination with stearic acid. None of these require use at levels that show up on SDS, because the SDS is about work place and transport safety, not reverse engineering the trade secrets of products.

cyccommute 

I see a whole lot more than just 3 folds, depending on how you count them. Each layer of the roll could be considered a “fold”. They certainly are stress points.

I suspect the valve has to be threaded into the tube because of the materials of construction. It may not be possible to form the seal around the valve like rubber does.

Just to be clear, this tube is only an example of what I would call “rolling” a tube. I’ve seen rubber tubes rolled like this but it’s rather uncommon.

canklecat

I just discarded a Schrader tube from my hybrid that had five or six patches. Probably been on that bike since 2015 or '16. Only reason I had to finally toss it was I got careless replacing a tire that fit too loosely and the tube sneaked out between the rim and bead and burst. That's always been a problem with the Alex S1000 rim on that bike -- the rim is slightly undersized and gets along only with Michelin Protek Cross Max tires. I tried to substitute my favorite hybrid tire, Conti SpeedRides, but the bead slipped on too easily, which should have been my warning.

Anyway, those glued patches may have been the toughest part of that tube. Those old glued patches feel more supple and more like part of the tube with age. If not for the bursting due to operator error, I'm sure that tube would have been good for years to come.

I'm a bit pickier about reusing patched road bike tubes, but with my hybrids? Nah, I'll patch and run those for as long as the tube lasts. I think my record was 9 patches on my errand bike rear tire. Lots of construction debris for a couple of years and I picked up a lot of staples, etc., back around 2015 before switching to those heavy duty Michelin bulletproof tires.

Sy Reene

LOL. I hope you kicked the guy who had the 20 flats out of every future ride ever.