Wheel question

grizzly

Got a new Giant FCR3 today, nice little bike but already got a flat back tire on the way home from a screw on the road. My last bike a Trek (which had much wider/thicker tires) went nearly two years without one.

Should I just expect more flats on these (700x26mm) wheels or does anyone recommend more resistant tires/tubes or something else – a friend got herself plastic rims that go between the tube and the tire. What would you recommend? I do lot of cycling on city/suburban roads in Dublin.

copacetic

you can expect more flats alright, the tyres are thinner with less thread and are pumped harder so much more likely to get punctures. You can get kevlar reinforced tyres which help but they are heavier. you could try the slime stuff to seal the punctures too. or you can get guard strips but they aren't great imo as you are still vunerable at the edges of the tyre and they give the trye a 'shoulder' which can cause you grip issues in corners.

best thing imo is to just get good at fixing them, can be done in 2 or 3 minutes at the side of the road. or carry a spare tube and then it is even quicker..

grizzly

Thanks copacetic, some good advice there (that sounds hard earned!)

pete4130

Punctures will be a bit more common I'm afraid. Get good at avoiding any debris on the road (without endangering yourself to avoid it). I run 700x23 total slicks and they get sliced up pretty good but never usually result in punctures (saying that I got one last week). It's usually the smallest piece of glass that will cause a puncture that you can't see rather than the bigger pieces. The bigger pieces are an indication that there is glass around.
Get good patches! I've found the best (as in they stick the best, don't peel and are low profile on the tube) are CURE-C-CURE brand. They should be about €1-€2 a strip of 7 or 8 patches. Any of the patches with red rubber on the contact side are really thck and don't seem to be as adhesive, plus if you need to try to remove one of those cheapo patches with the red rubber you'll be trying a while. The CURE-C-CURE are so good its possible to put a patch over a patch and they will hold. I refuse to use anything else!

Avoid any potholes or slightly sunken manholes as hitting them with any sort of speed will cause your tube to get pinched and punctured from either side of the rim causing what looks like a "snake bite" or "pinch flats" with 2 little slices that are usually hard to fix and close together (which is where the CURE-C-CURE patches come in and can overlap!).

Specialized do super tough kevlar tires called Armadillo tires. They are heavier than regular tires for sure, but even when flat you could just about get away cycling on them slowly to get you home. My housemates has had one on his road bike (700x25c I think) on the back wheel for nearly 2 years and asn't had a single punture and covered well over a thousand miles of city commuting. The only slight downside is they are made of a much harder rubber compound that offers slightly less grip than a softer rubber, less puncture resistant tire but its not really that noticeable.

Keeping your tires to a good high pressure helps too. If they are too soft then they you will be more prone to getting snake bit punctures as the tire will flatten out over any bumps more easily causing the tire to get pinched against the rim.

It also doesnt help that all the crud from the roads gets pushed into the cylcle lanes too.

Pete.

Money Shot

pete4130 wrote:

Specialized do super tough kevlar tires called Armadillo tires. They are heavier than regular tires for sure, but even when flat you could just about get away cycling on them slowly to get you home. My housemates has had one on his road bike (700x25c I think) on the back wheel for nearly 2 years and asn't had a single punture and covered well over a thousand miles of city commuting.

I also ride armadillo's when commuting - I've been riding them for about 5 years now, and have never had a puncture. Well, I had one, but it was a six inch nail that somehow got lodged in my back tyre.

I would recommned you use these - those strips aren't great. Unless, your racing, I wouldn't be concerned about the extra few grammes. They handle well too. I can't recommend them highly enough for peace of mind.

milod

Yeah, agree with Money and Pete - Armadillos are good I've had maybe 2 punctures in 5 years - they take some punishment - I'm running 700x23Cs and unless you're a road racing enthusiast you won't notice the weight difference. They handle well on corners, even in the wet. Continental Gatorskin are a close second in terms of quality, but go for the armadillo, especially on the back.

daymobrew

If you encounter patches of glass, please inform the local authority, so that others (with lesser tyres) don't get punctures there.

If I see glass in my immediate neighbourhood at home, I'll clean it up myself. Unfortunately it takes longer than you think because of the million pieces that glass breaks into.

pete4130

Sadly with the amount of glass on the roads in Dublin city centre you'd be never off the phone

I often wonder if there are people out there who deliberately throw glass into cycle lanes?

Ghost Rider

It's possible but it seems unlikely. I'd imagine that, for the most part, broken glass comes from bottles and pint glasses discarded by pedestrians and inevitably ending up in the cycle lanes.

I bought an FCR3 some months ago and haven't had a single puncture, by the way, even though I cycle in the city centre nearly every day. My tyres are 700x28, though, as opposed to the 700x26 ones run by the OP. Not sure if that explains anything, but I doubt it.

pete4130 wrote:

I often wonder if there are people out there who deliberately throw glass into cycle lanes?

E@gle.

specailized armildildo's FTW

i use the 700x23

Quigs Snr

I don't know if statistically thinner tires puncture more, maybe they do but its been 10,000km since my last flat and I am running on 700x23's (Continental Attack/Force, also a set of Hutchinson ultralites) for my training bikes, and 700x22 Continental Sprinters (Tubs) on the race bike. I do of course realise that having said that I will puncture the next time I sit on the bike of course.

With cheaper bikes, you get cheaper parts, I would suggest making sure you have good rim tape on those wheels and when those tires start to wear down, replace them with a reputable mid-range tire. My girlfriend had punctures on her Giant OCR4, whereas I am having a good run, I imagine the fact that her tires are generic no-name rubbish is a factor.

With road bikes and thinner tubes its very important to ensure that they are always pumped hard, if they are not you become more open to pinch flats which account for most of the punctures I see in races, i.e. 80psi instead of 120psi in a race tire, hit a pothole at 50kph and bang. (Note different psi ratings for different tires so check yours).

By the way I wouldn't bother my backside repairing a puncture on a road bike, the tubes are so small, plus if you are hammering down a long descent holding the brakes, the rims tend to heat up the tubes and tires, patches lift and before you know it you are teeth first into the tarmac. Depends on the type of riding you do I guess. For only a fiver a tube, I wouldn't spend the time messing about with patches ! But I guess everyone is different, when I was a kid I rode on tubes that looked like a patchwork quilt.

milod

Yeah, what Quigs says - patches may be cheaper but you have to put a value on your time too. I buy discount packs of tubes in Decathlon every time I visit France, so it works out at about €1.90 per tube.

When you get a puncture, and it's a rare occurrence with Armadillos, you don't want to be sitting at the side of the road for half an hour. A replacement tube and a gas canister will see back on the road in 5 mins...

Everywhere I go, I carry a bike tool, two plastic tyre levers, a spare tube and a gas canister refill for my pump in a little saddle bag I got from Lidl...