Originally Posted by
enargins
Thanks. That's good to know!
This tube was also a couple of years old, and had been sitting in my closet the whole time. I wonder if that had anything to do with it? Shouldn't have, but who knows.
Thanks again.
The tubes in my bike tires are over a couple years old. The one spare tube in the bike bag too. I guess using that logic, I'm SOL.
However I know from experience that you can use tubes way older than 2 years. The badly stored tube is probably a rare exception.
One of the common tube failures I use to have before I finally learned the last few lessons my tires wanted to teach me was that I simply let the tube get pinched as I was trying to get the bead of the tire over the rim. Maybe you did that too.
There are several variation on how that might happen, but all result in a flat and all with a tear like you seem to describe. All were from my carelessness and being inattentive to things.