After a half an hour of riding yesterday I had to come home to change a flat. This marked my secon tube to fall victim to a thorn in three weeks. Normally I just go and buy a new tube whenever this happens. But now It’s starting to get costly. I was wondering how well tube patches work. In particular how well this one works:
The glueless patches don’t work. At best they will patch the tube well enough to get you home, but they are not a long term patch. It would be nice if the glueless patches worked better because they are convenient, but unfortunately they don’t.
To patch the tube correctly you need to use a glue on patch. Follow the instructions in the patch kit and the patch will last the life of the tube.
The tube patches that come with a vulcanizing agent (which is more of a solvent than a glue) work great and are probably cheaper than the glueless (rhymes with useless) patches. Patch a tube in a clean, dry area following the manufacturers instructions, and it won’t come off…ever.
The glueless patches have worked great for me. I’ve used them on my Tandem bike and Uni alike. No fear for me of them coming off. Maybe those of you who do not like them got a bad or old batch of patches. The regular glue patches work well, till your glue tube is all dried up and then you need to get new glue. The gluesless patches are great because the package is so small and you don’t have to wait for the glue to become tacky. You can just stick the patch on and ride off.
I have used the glueless patches and thought they where OK. Not great, but OK. They would usually (but not always) fail after a week or three. I liked them for commuting because I could patch up my tube in double quick time then do a proper repair with glue when I got home or at the weekend.
As Sofaay glued patches are as good as new. The feather edge ones are the best. If use a lot then buy a kit to start with then buy the patches and the glue seperately.
BTW, if you blow on the glue (on the tube…no need to glue the orange part of the patch) it becomes tacky in about 10 seconds. That’s a decent wait, considering the results.
I still don’t know what the hell that little rubber tube in the patch kit is for though
I found the glueless to be useless but the glued patches to be great.
leans back with a misty look
I remember the days of huge vulcanizing patches that you had to light with a match… they hardly ever worked well… you youngsters have it so easy these days… blah blah blah…
>I still don’t know what the hell that little rubber tube in the patch
>kit is for though
It is a replacement for the rubber tube in what I would call a
‘standard’ bike tyre valve.
Klaas Bil
As long as the forum<->newsgroup link is only 50% reliable
I will post on both platforms. Sorry for any inconvenience.
No corrections planned for a future stats page.
