The Proper Way to Patch a Puncture on the Base of the Tube's Valve

Have you ever had a puncture right on the base of the tube’s valve while
being in the middle of nowhere and without having a spare tube? It happened to me before, more times that I can remember. In few of those instances I was lucky and a friend had a tube that I could use, in some others I was the only one with a 28″ bike so I couldn’t use any of my friend’s spare tubes or none of us had any spare tubes. In the last scenarios where I can’t use a spare tube, I desperately tried to patch the impossible puncture in any way possible, wishing that one day I would wise up and stop going for a ride without at least one spare tube in my saddle bag. But that never happened.

So I had to figure out a way to patch those peculiar punctures while on the road. After some trial and error, I found the best way to fix them. Using that method you either fix it for good or you will have to pump it up every 24 hrs or so. Either way, you ‘ll have a wheel perfectly capable of taking you home.

Step 1: Drilling a Hole

This is the important step that makes all the difference: Using a knife, you DRILL (NOT cut out) a small a hole by twisting your knife while applying some pressure.

Step 2: Make It Go Through

Carefully push the patch over the valve half way. NOTE: Same principle for car valves

Step 3: Glue It

While the patch is walf way in, apply some glue underneath it. In cases
like this I put more glue than usually on the problematic area.

Step 4: Pressure Till Is Glued

Wait 5 mins for the glue to get dry. Then apply firm pressure around the
base of the valve and the rest of the patch for 6 mins. See how perfectly the patch sat around the base of the valve using that method.

Step 5: Ready!

That’s it! Your tube is ready!
After having the same tube with this patch for few months and traveling around the island of Kefalonia for 4 days, I can say that this is legit!

Comments

[ernter]

thanks for sharing. i m sure this will come handy someday!

in order to avoid breaking the valve of the tube in the first place / avoid friction betweenthe rim and the rubbery base of the valve you should use the 2 small flat nuts that normally come with a new tube. One nut goes on the inside,one on the outside of the rim, locking the valve in place without having the rim rubbing on the rubber of that precious new tube.

[bicyclosis]

That's quite interesting, I have never done that!

As I can recall, the new tubes have one ring though...

[jack002]

I have had a few tubes lose the valve out of them, I wonder if this would work to put it back in

[bicyclosis]

Lose the valve? How something like that happened? You could try, I would be interested to know if this method could work in that extreme scenario (I doubt it though).