jitteringjr

I am curious how long you continue to use a tire that had a puncture and then your sealant sealed the leak. Do you feel confident in it holding for another 1000 miles? Do you further seal the tire with another method patch? Worm? or do you buy a new tire?

Reason I am asking is I hit a large chunk of loose asphalt about 30mm thick and it blew out a pinhole leak in the tire along the side wall. Since it was on the sidewall, there was no sealant that could get to the hole to seal it up. I was able to get home by just pumping the tire back up with the hand held pump a few times but now I need to fix it better.

So options I see are I could take the wheel out of the bike, inflate the tire and spin the wheel on its side so the sealant (stan's regular) does its thing and leave it. Or I could use an inner tube patch like the slime patches on the inside of the tire and reinforce the patch with rubber cement. I want to stay away from worms because there is something that just bugs me about drilling a much larger hole in the tire to get a worm in. This is only a pin hole and I was able to ride 5 miles at a time on it without having to stop and repump it up. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

WhyFi

I'd just pump it and position it so that the sealant can reach it - I would have done that one the road, no reason to put yourself through the fuss of re-pumping every 5 miles. If a puncture seals and there's not a noticeable bulge/casing damage, I don't give it a second thought - ride it 'til it's worn out.

jitteringjr

Unfortunately out on the road I couldn’t get the pressure up or should I say I was too lazy with the little pump to pump the pressure high enough to hear the leak so I had assumed the first time the the sealant had already sealed it. That was about 6 miles from home and the second time I was only about a mile from home and figured I would just top it off and deal with it at home. It was only at home with the floor pump at about 75-80# that I could start to hear the leak. And I have been riding at 70#s lately so that’s another reason I didn’t notice it on the road.

But I did what you said. I took the wheel off and took the opportunity to top off the sealant, then pumped it back up and spun it around on its side. This time I didn’t even hear the leak up to the rims max tubeless pressure of 85#. So I am guess at some point the sealant already did it’s job. It’s still holding, knock on wood, so I’ll check it again tomorrow.

But this brings me back to the original question of how people treat sealant sealed leaks for the longer term. How confident are people with riding on known leakers? In my tubes days, I would patch on the road but at home I would put in a new never leaked inner tube for the road tires and then relegate the patched tube to trainer duty so I wouldn’t have to deal with the patch not holding on the road. But there is a big difference between a $6 tube and a $80 tire.

DrIsotope

I ride the tires until the wear indicators are gone, or there is a mechanical failure. If the tire holds pressure, it's good to go.

cpach

It it seals, it's good to go, unless the problem recurs.
Then again, I definitely leave patched tubes in my tires.

bobones

If a puncture seals and then holds when the tyre is topped up to full pressure (around 80 psi for me) I'll just forget about it and continue to ride as normal. If it doesn't hold at 80 psi and sealant weeps from the hole, then I'll continue to use the tyre until I can be bothered to patch the hole from the inside. I've found that Orange Seal can seal and hold at higher pressures where Stans and others have failed.

Racing Dan

There are patches specificly designed for patching tubeless tyres from the inside. Im not fully informed how they differ from tube patches, but Rema Tip Tip has then in some of their patch kits. I would go that route if the sealant had trouble sealing the hole.

https://www.rematiptop.com/part.php?pid=58&cid=6&sid=4

Imo, a patched tube is just as good a a new one, at least if you do it right with a patch and vulcanising cement. The glue less patches Im less confident in. I have several tubes with many patches and I have never had a patch come off or leak.

bobones

Tubeless specific patches are reinforced so they don't bulge. I recently bought some Velox branded ones to fix a fairly large sidewall cut. Standard patches are fine for little holes as bulging is not really a problem. Some tubeless ready tyres don't' have a butyl lining and vulcanizing solutions don't work well, but super glue can fix these sufficiently. I have never viewed self adhesive patches as a permanent fix.

Racing Dan

Does this mean you can use tube less patches for side wall cuts in non-tube less tyres? From memory super glue/cyano acrylate is very brittle. Are you referring to any specific super glue?

bobones

I don't see why not.

I've used rubberized/flexible super glue like Locite Power Flex or the Gorilla equivalent.