Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Out here, in the desert town of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, my bicycles and I have one mortal enemy. It is Zygophyllaceae, Caltrop Family - known as puncture vine, goats heads, double gees and sometimes bindi-bindi. There's a photo of these horrible plants here. They are a noxious weed out here, and this year we had more rain than usual so there are lots of them around.
I have two bikes - one is a mountain bike running Sun Rhynolite rims, with presta valves (26" wheels), the other is a flat bar roadie running 28mm 700c tyres. I have had 10 punctures across both the bikes in the 3 months I have been living in town, despite running 'Mr Tuffy's' tyre liners and heavy duty tubes.
I am told that there are only two effective ways to save my sanity by reducing the number of punctures I get - one involves spending $120 on a set of tyres, the other is putting slime in the tubes. Problem with slime is that you can't push it in through a presta valve and tubes with presta valves with removable cores are rare in 28mm or 26" x 2.125 versions.
So I decided to go old school. In this instructable I will show you how to make your current presta valve tubes into self sealing slime tubes with a little bit of surgery.
PS - slime in your tyres will add a noticable amount to the rolling weight of your bike, so it takes some getting used to, but it's worth it in order to prevent those annoying punctures.
I have two bikes - one is a mountain bike running Sun Rhynolite rims, with presta valves (26" wheels), the other is a flat bar roadie running 28mm 700c tyres. I have had 10 punctures across both the bikes in the 3 months I have been living in town, despite running 'Mr Tuffy's' tyre liners and heavy duty tubes.
I am told that there are only two effective ways to save my sanity by reducing the number of punctures I get - one involves spending $120 on a set of tyres, the other is putting slime in the tubes. Problem with slime is that you can't push it in through a presta valve and tubes with presta valves with removable cores are rare in 28mm or 26" x 2.125 versions.
So I decided to go old school. In this instructable I will show you how to make your current presta valve tubes into self sealing slime tubes with a little bit of surgery.
PS - slime in your tyres will add a noticable amount to the rolling weight of your bike, so it takes some getting used to, but it's worth it in order to prevent those annoying punctures.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1Find something to 'push' the slime through
As we can't push the slime through the valve of a Presta tube, we need to make a hole in the tube in order to inject the slime. Obviously we want to make this puncture hole as small as possible so that it is easy to patch later.
I used the tip of this pen in order to push slime through the small hole we are about to make in the tube.... you can use anything though, just remember that the slime clots if the hole is too small (it guarantees to self-seal any hole 3mm or smaller in the tube), making it impossible to push any more through, so you need a balance between the ease of patching the hole and having it big enough to actually get the slime in there.
I used the tip of this pen in order to push slime through the small hole we are about to make in the tube.... you can use anything though, just remember that the slime clots if the hole is too small (it guarantees to self-seal any hole 3mm or smaller in the tube), making it impossible to push any more through, so you need a balance between the ease of patching the hole and having it big enough to actually get the slime in there.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
Apparently the probability of a puncture is next to nil.
Very expensive ($100) conversion, but I think it's worth it.
You can always just buy a tube with slime in it already. I have a slime tube in my saddle bag by default. In South Africa's bike shops we usually have a whole shelf dedicated to anti-puncture products.
Regarding increased rolling-inertia: If you are on a road bike in a race speeding at 50-60 km/h rooting for a record, THEN only will rolling inertia make a difference. And in that case you will have no punctures to worry about. Slower XC's or MTB's will be unnafected. If you are still worried about it, use slime and tyre-liners, with tyres that has less knobblies. Increased rolling inertia with decreased rolling resitance will cancel eachother out.