Tyre puncture prevention

semmyroundel

Active Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2021
Messages
217
Location
London UK
I'm assuming that the S10 has an innertube right?
I ask this as I've seen posts mentioning tyre plugs which I thought were for tubeless tyres.
So assuming yes to innertube, what do people recommend? A Gloop type liquid in the innertube and a small compressor?
If they don't have an innertube, a plug kit?


I'm really interested on what people have actually repaired their own punctures with-or indeed, stopped a puncture with.
 

Top Ten

Active Member
Joined
Aug 24, 2018
Messages
105
Location
Rockwall, Texas
I have had numerous flats on a motorcycle. Some with tubes, some tubeless. I have repaired both. A factory ST does not come with tube-type tires. They are tubeless. When I have a flat on tubeless tires, I plug the tire. If you have the factory wheels on your ST, get yourself a tubeless tire repair kit.
 

Checkswrecks

Ungenear to broked stuff
Staff member
Global Moderator
2011 Site Supporter
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
11,489
Location
Damascus, MD
These bikes have tubeless tires. Fixing flats has numerous threads already which can be found with the search box.

Please start threads in the appropriate sub-forums so the moderators don't spend our time cleaning up.
Thx
 

Jlq1969

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
1,749
Location
Argentina
As it is an issue that involves "safety", it would be good to know what motivated you to "assume" that it has an inner tube.
Internally, the rim is not designed for a tube, this does not imply that if the tire breaks, you can put a tube on it to continue until changing the tire (but knowing that the tube can fail at any time)
 
Last edited:

EricV

Riding, farkling, riding...
2011 Site Supporter
2012 Site Supporter
2013 Site Supporter
2014 Site Supporter
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
8,227
Location
Tupelo, MS
@Jlq1969 - He may have incorrectly thought it had tubes because of the wire spoked wheels. If you're not familiar with modern wire spoked tubeless wheels, that would be understandable.

I've ridden a lot of miles and plugged a lot of flats on tubeless tires. My wife once bought a Stop-n-Go kit. What trash. Those work, for temporary repairs, and they specifically tell you it's a temporary repair. Why waste your time when you can do a permanent repair on the road?

Buy a standard automotive sticky string repair kit with T handles that comes with an insertion tool and a reaming tool. These have been used for decades by truckers and other tubeless tire owners to repair flats permanently. The sticky string becomes a part of the tire. It never needs to be replaced. THIS is one, there are many variations, note it includes the described tools. These are REQUIRED. It will also come with a small tube of rubber cement. Do not buy a Dynaplug kit. They only work for very small, clean holes and often fail to bond to the tire. Do not buy a 2 in 1 combo tool, it's tremendously more difficult to insert into the tire to ream the puncture hole than a standard pointed reamer. Do not buy CO2 kits, get an air compressor. CO2 rarely fills the tire to the correct pressure unless you have large cartridges and/or several of them. Then when you find out you have another puncture, or your repair didn't work, you're screwed.

You will also need a small air compressor, do some searches, there are many preferences out there. You can NOT power an air compressor from the factory Cigarette power port, it's fused at 3 amp and you need a 10-15 amp circuit. The wiring is too small to support a high draw device, so resist the urge to just put a larger fuse in. People do that, and sometimes get away with it, other times they melt the wiring. Many people power their air compressors from a battery tender pigtail. Those are easy to install directly to the battery and have an inline fuse. They are most often SAE style plugs. You can purchase an adapter, or simply change the plug on the air compressor to SAE. You can also buy many air compressors that already come with SAE plugs. Do some searches, there are thread discussing this already. Searches must have words longer than three letters, so search for 'flat repair' or 'compressor', not 'air'.

There are also some good write ups on doing a tubeless tire repair. Read several. Next time you are ready to replace a tire, use a drill and either insert some screws into your tire, or drill some 1/8" holes and practice your tire repair techniques on the worn out tire. Better to learn the process in your nice dry garage than on the road, in less than ideal conditions. Tip - Step # 1 for tire repairs is to INFLATE THE TIRE. It's a lot easier to push those tools into the tire when it has air in it.
 

SHUMBA

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2018
Messages
1,242
Location
ONTARIO, CANADA
@Jlq1969 - He may have incorrectly thought it had tubes because of the wire spoked wheels. If you're not familiar with modern wire spoked tubeless wheels, that would be understandable.

I've ridden a lot of miles and plugged a lot of flats on tubeless tires. My wife once bought a Stop-n-Go kit. What trash. Those work, for temporary repairs, and they specifically tell you it's a temporary repair. Why waste your time when you can do a permanent repair on the road?

Buy a standard automotive sticky string repair kit with T handles that comes with an insertion tool and a reaming tool. These have been used for decades by truckers and other tubeless tire owners to repair flats permanently. The sticky string becomes a part of the tire. It never needs to be replaced. THIS is one, there are many variations, note it includes the described tools. These are REQUIRED. It will also come with a small tube of rubber cement. Do not buy a Dynaplug kit. They only work for very small, clean holes and often fail to bond to the tire. Do not buy a 2 in 1 combo tool, it's tremendously more difficult to insert into the tire to ream the puncture hole than a standard pointed reamer. Do not buy CO2 kits, get an air compressor. CO2 rarely fills the tire to the correct pressure unless you have large cartridges and/or several of them. Then when you find out you have another puncture, or your repair didn't work, you're screwed.

You will also need a small air compressor, do some searches, there are many preferences out there. You can NOT power an air compressor from the factory Cigarette power port, it's fused at 3 amp and you need a 10-15 amp circuit. The wiring is too small to support a high draw device, so resist the urge to just put a larger fuse in. People do that, and sometimes get away with it, other times they melt the wiring. Many people power their air compressors from a battery tender pigtail. Those are easy to install directly to the battery and have an inline fuse. They are most often SAE style plugs. You can purchase an adapter, or simply change the plug on the air compressor to SAE. You can also buy many air compressors that already come with SAE plugs. Do some searches, there are thread discussing this already. Searches must have words longer than three letters, so search for 'flat repair' or 'compressor', not 'air'.

There are also some good write ups on doing a tubeless tire repair. Read several. Next time you are ready to replace a tire, use a drill and either insert some screws into your tire, or drill some 1/8" holes and practice your tire repair techniques on the worn out tire. Better to learn the process in your nice dry garage than on the road, in less than ideal conditions. Tip - Step # 1 for tire repairs is to INFLATE THE TIRE. It's a lot easier to push those tools into the tire when it has air in it.
Now, all of this is excellent advice, well done!!!
SHUMBA

Sent from my SM-A715W using Tapatalk
 

WJBertrand

Ventura Highway
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Messages
4,516
Location
Ventura, CA
I've ridden a lot of miles and plugged a lot of flats on tubeless tires. My wife once bought a Stop-n-Go kit. What trash. Those work, for temporary repairs, and they specifically tell you it's a temporary repair. Why waste your time when you can do a permanent repair on the road?

Buy a standard automotive sticky string repair kit with T handles that comes with an insertion tool and a reaming tool. These have been used for decades by truckers and other tubeless tire owners to repair flats permanently. The sticky string becomes a part of the tire. It never needs to be replaced. THIS is one, there are many variations, note it includes the described tools. These are REQUIRED. It will also come with a small tube of rubber cement. Do not buy a Dynaplug kit. They only work for very small, clean holes and often fail to bond to the tire. Do not buy a 2 in 1 combo tool, it's tremendously more difficult to insert into the tire to ream the puncture hole than a standard pointed reamer. Do not buy CO2 kits, get an air compressor. CO2 rarely fills the tire to the correct pressure unless you have large cartridges and/or several of them. Then when you find out you have another puncture, or your repair didn't work, you're screwed.
This sounds like my experience. I tried both Dyna plugs and Stop n Go products, and though others have had luck with them, I've had none. The Stop n Go plugs are unreinforced and tore apart when I tried to plug a tire in the middle of nowhere in the rain returning from Montana. I tried several times with no success and ended up tossing the whole kit into a roadside rest stop trash bin out of frustration. Luckily I had a couple of the red automotive sticky string "gummy worm" thread reinforced plugs and tools along with me. That worked the first time. I thought the Stop n Go kit was going to be an upgrade, glad I held onto my back ups. In that case I happened only to have CO2 cartridges, but I had done the tire volume calculations and figured I needed ~7 of them to pressurized the rear tire to 42 PSI. I tossed in 8 figuring I'd waste the first one trying to use the inflator. As it turned out, I forgot about the fudge factor and ended up putting in all 8. That pressurized the tier to >50PSI! The gummy plug was holding so I skedaddled to the closest town and stopped at the first service station I saw with an air hose and determined the repair was holding up just fine.

On the road again I started to worry that if that first attempt to seal the tire hadn't worked I'd be out of CO2, so have since added a compact 12V compressor to my kit. Since then I've plugged both car and bike tires at least a half dozen times or more (I had an incredibly run of bad luck with punctures a few years back) with gummy worms having a 99.9% first try success rate. In all cases I ran the plugged tires until they were worn out. The reason my success was not 100% was I had one plug that developed a slow leak (a couple of PSI a day) after a few thousand miles. I just ended up re-plugging it and that was that. I had a buddy with a Gold Wing who had tried to repair a rear flat with a Stop n Go plug on a day ride, but a few miles later the entire plug was spat out and he suffered a sudden deflation. Luckily he is a very skilled rider and avoided an accident.
 
B

ballisticexchris

Guest
I'm assuming that the S10 has an innertube right?
If you bend the rim then that is correct. Otherwise it is a tubeless tire. I highly recommend the suggested repair by Sierra. Rope style are second choice and only in an emergency until you can do a proper repair.

It is not much effort to remove tire from rim and do it right. I have found tire changes on the Super Tenere to be not much more difficult than a 10 speed bicycle tire. It takes longer to remove the wheel than change the tire. With no double rim locks or UHD tube to worry about, a quick rope repair on the side of the road then a proper repair in a safe spot ASAP is highly suggested.
 

MFP

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 9, 2018
Messages
1,410
Location
NYC, NY
Here is a breakdown of my kit for on/off the road tire maintenance.
Tire plugs:
Air pump:
Air pressure gauge:
 

semmyroundel

Active Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2021
Messages
217
Location
London UK
As it is an issue that involves "safety", it would be good to know what motivated you to "assume" that it has an inner tube.
Internally, the rim is not designed for a tube, this does not imply that if the tire breaks, you can put a tube on it to continue until changing the tire (but knowing that the tube can fail at any time)
My two other bikes (XT660X and Harley Sportster are both spoked wheels and have inner tubes) so I guess I was asking not only about the S10, but prevention that would include inner tubed tyres.
 

semmyroundel

Active Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2021
Messages
217
Location
London UK
@Jlq1969 - He may have incorrectly thought it had tubes because of the wire spoked wheels. If you're not familiar with modern wire spoked tubeless wheels, that would be understandable.

I've ridden a lot of miles and plugged a lot of flats on tubeless tires. My wife once bought a Stop-n-Go kit. What trash. Those work, for temporary repairs, and they specifically tell you it's a temporary repair. Why waste your time when you can do a permanent repair on the road?

Buy a standard automotive sticky string repair kit with T handles that comes with an insertion tool and a reaming tool. These have been used for decades by truckers and other tubeless tire owners to repair flats permanently. The sticky string becomes a part of the tire. It never needs to be replaced. THIS is one, there are many variations, note it includes the described tools. These are REQUIRED. It will also come with a small tube of rubber cement. Do not buy a Dynaplug kit. They only work for very small, clean holes and often fail to bond to the tire. Do not buy a 2 in 1 combo tool, it's tremendously more difficult to insert into the tire to ream the puncture hole than a standard pointed reamer. Do not buy CO2 kits, get an air compressor. CO2 rarely fills the tire to the correct pressure unless you have large cartridges and/or several of them. Then when you find out you have another puncture, or your repair didn't work, you're screwed.

You will also need a small air compressor, do some searches, there are many preferences out there. You can NOT power an air compressor from the factory Cigarette power port, it's fused at 3 amp and you need a 10-15 amp circuit. The wiring is too small to support a high draw device, so resist the urge to just put a larger fuse in. People do that, and sometimes get away with it, other times they melt the wiring. Many people power their air compressors from a battery tender pigtail. Those are easy to install directly to the battery and have an inline fuse. They are most often SAE style plugs. You can purchase an adapter, or simply change the plug on the air compressor to SAE. You can also buy many air compressors that already come with SAE plugs. Do some searches, there are thread discussing this already. Searches must have words longer than three letters, so search for 'flat repair' or 'compressor', not 'air'.

There are also some good write ups on doing a tubeless tire repair. Read several. Next time you are ready to replace a tire, use a drill and either insert some screws into your tire, or drill some 1/8" holes and practice your tire repair techniques on the worn out tire. Better to learn the process in your nice dry garage than on the road, in less than ideal conditions. Tip - Step # 1 for tire repairs is to INFLATE THE TIRE. It's a lot easier to push those tools into the tire when it has air in it.
Very comprehensive, many thanks.
 

EricV

Riding, farkling, riding...
2011 Site Supporter
2012 Site Supporter
2013 Site Supporter
2014 Site Supporter
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
8,227
Location
Tupelo, MS
As a side note, the sticky string is a material that bonds completely and chemically to the rubber of the tire. It won't pull out if it's installed correctly, you'll have to drill it out. Which is kind of silly, if it's bonded in that good, why mess with it to do a second permanent repair? I have had truly big holes and the only repair that fixed it long term was the inside patch/plug that Sierra showed us. I keep one of those on the bike and another in the garage, just in case.
 

Sierra1

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2016
Messages
14,815
Location
Joshua TX
Yeah, I used a sticky string on my last puncture. It held enough to get me home, but was leaking. My dealer put one of the patch/plugs in, and it's still holding without leaks.
 

JJTJ2

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
349
Location
Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri
Nealey says that theirs is permanent fix. You stick it in, twist it 1.5 turns, and pull the middle section back out and cut the tool free. This puts what is equivalent to a knot against the hole on the inside and essentially 4 strings to seal the hole.
 

EricV

Riding, farkling, riding...
2011 Site Supporter
2012 Site Supporter
2013 Site Supporter
2014 Site Supporter
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
8,227
Location
Tupelo, MS
Nealey says that theirs is permanent fix. You stick it in, twist it 1.5 turns, and pull the middle section back out and cut the tool free. This puts what is equivalent to a knot against the hole on the inside and essentially 4 strings to seal the hole.
The Nealey kit is another type of sticky string kit. You do the twist and pull on both when installing the string to form that knot on the inside. Well built and IIRC, their strings are slightly smaller than the general purpose and red trucker ones for the other sticky string kits. The only issue I have with that kit is the one tool for cleaning and inserting the sticky string. The Nealey tool doesn't have an eyelet slit at the tip, thus the need to cut the string to free the tool. For a good bond, the puncture hole must be clean. If it's just a nail or screw in dry conditions, often not a big deal. If it's wet or an odd puncture, then w/o a good reamer, it's really difficult to get a good repair. And I really, really prefer T handles. My first kit was strait handles. After doing a couple of repairs I gave that away and bought T handles. So much easier and worth the extra bulk, for me.

A friend and I were both riding a 24 hour endurance rally out of Salt Lake City, UT. Not together, but there was a 'main route' with bonus locations off of it that most riders were following. He hit a porcupine and got a quill in the tire, causing a flat. (not sure if it was already road kill or not) Slow enough that he noticed it at a gas stop and was able to do a sticky string repair there and head back out. I came across him a few miles later, on the side of the busy interstate, jacket off, tools everywhere, hot, stressed about the clock, sweaty and frustrated. When I saw all the tools spread out on the side of the road, I started slowing down anyway, before I realized it was my friend.

I got pulled over behind him and asked what the problem was. He told me about the porcupine quill and the repair wasn't holding. I asked him if he had used glue on his repair and his frustrated reply was "Glue! There is supposed to be glue?!" (His kit only had one insertion tool and strings, no reamer, no glue.) I hoped off my bike and pulled my kit out and re-did his repair, reaming the heck out of the hole because it was almost a keyhole shape from the quill, then installing a new sticky string with liberal amounts of rubber cement. The cement acts as both a lube and as a filler for tiny areas where the sticky string might not bond on it's own in irregular holes. We aired the tire up and it was holding. I stayed while he got packed back up and made sure it was ok, then took off. He passed me shortly after that, making time. The tire held, he pulled off a BBG during the rally and finished in the top five. I think I came in 14th that time, which was fine for me. That repair held for the rest of the life of that tire, several thousand more miles.
 
Top