night mission

I'm repairing tubes at a rate that suggests I need industrial qualities of patch and vulcanizing glue. Rema 203 Cold vulcanizing for patch repair (8 oz) is selling for $17.50 on Amazon. It appears other brands aimed at bike repair are selling for similar prices. Walmart sells Elmer's rubber cement (4 oz) for $2.19 (online price). Is the "bike" stuff any different? Anyone have any experience using one vs the other?

wschruba

This comes up every now and then here. The short answer is, yes, there is a difference. The long answer is, you might get away with using rubber cement for a period of time, but it will eventually fail in adhesion. "Proper" patch cement has a vulcanizing aspect that will bond the patch to the tube.

The proper fix may still fail, by the way...but done well, you can easily continue using the tube until it fails catastrophically (or gets a hole too close to another patch to fix it).

fietsbob

Yup, Its been posted before, have a look ..

Try "search", or "archives", here?

night mission

Thanks for the quick replies/imput. Forum searches are like looking for stuff in the kitchen, You can look around aimlessly thinking you know where stuff is or you can shortcut the process and ask the boss, who knows everything. I did look and may have found a relevant post or thread, but failed in the short time I allotted.

Will order the real stuff and a couple more tubes. Anyone know where to get the real little tubes of glue for carry kits? The Park Tool patch repair kit comes with lots more patches than the puny cement tube could ever fix. Figuring to just make the glue tubes one off for road repair and replace at home with another tube. Will have the industrial can of Rema 203 for workshop repairs.

davidad

I buy Slime rubber cement at the auto parts store.

HillRider

The "correct" Rema cement is better but i've successfully patched dozens of tubes over many years using Elmer's rubber cement so it does work.

AnkleWork

I'm pretty sure that Elmer's rubber cement is not "industrial quality vulcanizing glue." It just dries.

wschruba

For future reference, vBulletin's search feature is pretty crummy. Unless you are looking on a closed forum (that you need an account to view sub-forums in), you will be better served by searching using Google:
insite:www.bikeforums.net rubber cement, for instance, will search all of bikeforums looking for instances of 'rubber' and 'cement'. To add to the fun, you could do insite:www.bikeforums.net "rubber cement", which will look specifically for instances of rubber and cement, right next to each other.

This is true, but it is airtight, when applied properly. As has been noted here (and in past threads), it works 'well enough'. Since 'well enough' means 'sometimes not', I prefer to use the right product, and fix it once, instead of twice. That's just me, though.

hhnngg1

You def want the vulcanizing one.

I used a regular rubber cement for awhile since I thought it would work as well. It does work, but not for long periods of time - all of my patched tubes with regular rubber cement leaked after about 4 weeks or so. I actually kind of lost faith in patching for awhile, then I remembered that I wasn't using the vulcanizing one.

Once I went back to the vulcanizing one, the patches work long-term.

Bill Kapaun

Life's too short to use an inferior product.
Elmers etal may hold, or it may hold for awhile.
One problem that occurs is when you get your next flat and need to air up the tube to find the leak, an old patch may "pull off".
That's a problem I've ran into with "stick on" patches.

Nice thing about REMA patches with the feathered edge is overlapping patches is no problem.

fietsbob

there are bulk packages too half pint jars, & boxes of a half gross of little tubes of the self vulcanizing fluid
& patches by the hundreds...

Astrozombie

What i'm wondering is are those large patches any good? I've used them and my tube became so deformed that my tire was wobbly...........

dedhed

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/...W-VxoCpvDw_wcB

AlexCyclistRoch

It's what people used to call "horse glue". Might be good for gluing your floormats back on your car, but not to hold 60 psig or more...

mrrabbit 

vBulletin search engine works fine IF you understand its an open ended search engine.

Searching for exact matches - will give you nothing.
Searching for a general term independent of forum selection - will give you too much incluidng unrelated.

Search > Advanced Search > Select "Bicycle Mechanics" > Search for "rubber cement glue"

Enjoy the list...

=8-)

SkyDog75

So long as the tube can stretch to fill the volume of the tire, you'll be fine. Big patches, small patches, lots of patches... it doesn't matter.

hhnngg1

I batch patch too, and honestly, I find it easiest and best to just buy the small Park Tool patch kits that sell for around $5 to batch patch 4-6 tubes at a time, and then be done with it. You don't have to worry about the cement going dry, and you'll do it so infrequently (like 3x/yr max - else you're getting 18 flats a year which is ridiculous), so it's not a cost issue to not buy in bulk.

shelbyfv

I buy the boxes of 100 Rema patches, I like that you can get small ones that fit a road tube. I use the Slime cement, easy to find at Walmart or the auto parts store. The Slime may not be as good as the Rema but I've been using it for years w/o failure.

zebede

This also what I am currently using with zero patch failures.

Rubber Cement Vulcunizing Compound is almost as contentious as chain lube....

My last two jars have been from different autoparts store offerings at about half the cost of rema.

As recommended by others here, I keep the jar tightly closed between uses and turn it upside down. My last jar was getting pretty thick by the time I got to the bottom.

CabezaShok

for the past 5 years ive had good luck contact cement and homemade rubber patches from old tubes. After sanding and degreasing with alcohol i apply THICK coats of cement on both patch and tube, let sit for 10-15 then clamp together in a vice protected with wax paper, then let cure overnight. then i test pump for leaks and add more contact cement if needed.

contact cement is cheap everywhere but California and comes in big steel cans at hardware stores. It is water resistant but not waterproof, so i think its not the ideal stuff for leaky cracked/old tires in wet climates.
It works well for me most of the time but some tubes just don't like this cement, so I will try this GreenSlime auto tire glue on those.

Bike Gremlin

I stick to Rema patches and glue - for all I've tried, they seem to work best.

As for "vulcanizing" - for all I know, that reffers to an irreversable process of changing rubber's attributes. All the patches, including Rema's allow for a reversable process - you can heat it up with an iron and easily remove the patches. Same happens in case a tyre gets very, very hot (if it doesn't blow up first) - the patches will come loose. Vulcanized rubber, and patches made using that technology do not allow for this - for better and for worse.

HillRider

The glue bond doesn't have to hold 60 psi or even 10 psi. A perfect tube won't hold 60 psi. The glue only has to seal the hole in the tube. The tire contains the pressure.

I agree Elmers isn't the ideal patch glue but it's what we always have around and I've had very good success using it and, no the patches don't fail in 4 weeks, or even 4 months. I do use Rema patches and they contribute a great deal to the success.

leob1

This

Not this.

pdlamb

+1.


If OP is going through patches so fast that he'll run out of glue before it dries up, go ahead and get the Rema. It just hurts more when you open the can and it's the consistency of warm bubble gum. $3-4 bottle of Elmer's hits that stage? Toss it!


And just FWIW, I didn't had a plague of bad patches when I started using Elmer's. They last just as long as any other patch -- until the valve craps out or until there's a hole too big to bother patching, whichever comes first.

RubeRad

Note, the product you linked to is named "VICTOR Rubber Cement", but one of the reviews talks about how they got an MSDS from the manufacturer that calls it "Chemical VULCANIZING Cement".

I like the idea to turn it upside down. Any thoughts on what kind of container would be able to store (and dispense) small quantities from this big can in your seatbag, to go with a handful of rema patches for roadside repairs? Maybe something as simple as a ziploc bag with a single-use amount? Cut the corner off, squeeze it out, throw it away?

For the last few years I've gotten good results from Park VP-1 kits. At the moment I'm 'ahead' in that I have an opened tube of glue that hasn't run out or dried up, but I used up all the patches from that kit.