Tyre Trauma

Some bike days are dominated by one thing. Recently for me it was tyres.

To set the scene I had three new tyres to fit to bikes. I’d splashed out on new rubber for the Process, before having to consider a new rear tyre for the commuter as a puncture on the way to work suggested the old one was too worn to last the winter. These had sat waiting to be fitted as I was seriously concerned about the effort it would take to get the road tyre onto the wheel given my previous bad experiences.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny and I felt like it was worth a go. I approached the commuter with trepidation, all ready for a frustrating fight with the tight bead of a Schwable City Jet. All that would be forgotten as the tyre almost fell onto the rim and I had everything back together in no time at all. Heartened I moved onto the endure bike to fit the Maxxis High Roller 2s (a classic choice). This was more of a fight and cost me two tyre levers but they didn’t put up too much of a struggle and were fitted in the end. Along with finned brake pads this meant a fairly aggressive set-up for Bike Park Wales at the end of the week.

So this is a fairly boring story so far, which only gets marginally more interesting when I say that after about half an hour of watching the DH World Championships I went back to find the front tyre on the Process flat. I fixed that puncture and made the story no more engaging. Having done so I took the hardtail out for a bit of a ride in the sunshine, which is all very usual for a Sunday.

It was around 20 km into an entirely pleasant ride on baked mud and dusty lanes that there was an almighty clatter and metallic racket, followed by the unmistakable sound of a rapidly deflating tyre. I stopped as that seemed prudent, and looked…

A photo posted by @andy_c_11 on Sep 11, 2016 at 10:14am PDT

So that was bad.

Given this situation I had to engage more with tyres, in this case patching the holes in the tyre with puncture repair patches and fitting a new inner tube and then hoping that it would all be fine for the remaining 10 km back to the car. It was a bit of an operation getting it all fixed but it was done after a while and (while not adding to the excitement of the story) I successfully rode back to the car and home.

So there we go, lots of tyre issues. Who said this blog was boring?

A