- There's nothing more deflating than the sound
of air escaping from an inner tube when you're riding along.
So today, let's have a look at how to repair a puncture
at the side of the road so that you can continue your ride.
So first things first, you want to make sure
that you're not on the carriage way or the road whatsoever.
So get off of that, get yourself on the pavement
or in the entrance to a field, anything like that,
so you are not in danger of any passing vehicles.
First up then we want to remove the wheel from the bike,
so that's the wheel with the offending puncture.
And then once that wheel is out of the frame
or the forks, you want to try and put
the bike somewhere soft or even if there's a fence close by,
you could hook the handlebar over that to keep it upright.
Alternatively, if there's nothing at all soft,
I would actually probably advise, this is the only time
I would say doing so, is turn the bike upside down
so you're not going to risk damaging any carbon dropouts
because a little bit of moisture in there,
sometimes can actually delaminate the carbon.
Now to repair our punctured inner tube,
we are going to need a few different tools.
And thanks to our friends at Topeak
I do have a few here with me.
So I've got myself a CO2 canister,
also a pair of tire levers and some well
as some glueless patches here.
Of course, you can replace the whole inner tube,
if you so wish, but that's not necessary.
They're environmentally friendly, because after all,
rubber does grow on trees.
And also in my back pocket I've got myself a mini pump too,
because, well, you can run out of canisters,
but you can never run out of air.
Take a closer look over the wheel,
over the tire and try and find any foreign objects,
which may have well have penetrated the tire
and then gone into that inner tube and given that puncture.
One of the reasons why we line up logos
with valves, is for the reason,
if you do find something in the tire,
when you remove the inner tube,
you know roughly the distance away from the valve
where to look in the inner tube for that hole.
So now we've done that and we've got nothing in the tire.
You do have to take a little bit of care
and attention there, if it's little bit of glass or a thorn,
you could well cut your finger.
So it's best to do it visually first,
and then if you do have a pair of gloves on
or something like that, just see if anything gets trapped.
Then we want to remove half of the bead of the tire.
There's no need to take the whole tire off, necessarily.
So grab your tire levers and then it's simply a case
of hooking it underneath one part of the bead
and then the other one underneath and removing
that side of the tire.
Once the tire's off, you can remove that inner tube
from the rim.
Now you've removed the tube from the tire and the wheel.
It's time to try and find out where that hole is.
Now you could spend a great deal of time looking
at the actually tube itself, trying to find it,
but generally holes, they tend to be about
the size of a pin prick.
And they're not that easy to find.
So that's where either your mini pump comes in handy
or alternatively even your mouth.
Now as gross as it sounds, you can in fact inflate
a Presta type valve by simply putting your lips around it
and blowing it up.
You're not going to get up to any sort of pressure,
but you may well be able to get it up just enough pressure
to find that hole.
So this is why we are in fact going to use our mini pump
and this is one of the reasons why I do always advise taking
a pump with you on your ride.
Just to try and identify where that pesky puncture is.
Now this hole is absolutely tiny.
I did in fact have to inflate the tube by quite a margin,
as you can see
and then the only way by actually finding it,
I had to hold it out to my face
and I could feel just tiny little stream of air
coming out of that.
So, I got myself some sandpaper.
I'm just going to rough up that surface,
so that the self-adhesive patch I'd use will work.
Now before you go ahead and stick that self-adhesive patch
onto the inner tube, make sure that the area
where you are going to stick it has no grease
or moisture on it, otherwise it's not going to
do its job effectively.
So once it is there, make sure, of course,
you peel back it ever so carefully
and you're not getting your fingerprints all over it,
'cause that could affect the adhesion too.
Put it onto the actual tube itself, making sure
that the offending hole is
in the central most part of that patch.
Now apply pressure onto the patch for about a minute
so that it does stick as well as possible.
At this point, don't be tempted to apply loads
and loads of pressure into the inner tube,
to try and check your handiwork
because you wouldn't be the first person out there to do it.
And the patch just come off, 'cause they do take
a little bit of time just to well,
have a really good joint with the inner tube itself.
Now before we actually put the inner tube
back inside of the carcass of the tire and the rim bed,
we actually do want to put a small amount of air
into the inner tube, just to give it a little bit of shape,
so it doesn't get twisted or anything like that.
And also it makes it just a little bit easier
to put back inside.
Put a few pumps of air in, nothing too much.
Just enough to give it a little bit of shape.
And then lock that valve down again.
One final check to do before reinserting that inner tube
is just to gently and carefully run your fingers
around inside of that tire,
trying to find the foreign object
that may well have caused that puncture.
It's not always going to be in there,
but sometimes they do go through.
Also, check the rim tapes too.
Make sure that any spoke heads are fully covered up
so the spoke nipples also.
And also pay particular close attention around the valve
because quite often if you got yourself an aluminum rim,
they can become a little bit sharpened in there
and just wear away.
If you do have a puncture there around a valve,
quite often they're very difficult to repair properly.
This one though is all okay and we're ready
to go ahead and fit that tube again.
So in goes the valve.
I always do valve first.
Some people out there like to finish with the valve.
But I've always done it with the valve first
and while I've done it for donkey's years now
and it's simply a case of putting that inner tube inside
of the tire.
What's important here is it doesn't become twisted
or out of shape or anything like that.
That's why putting those initial few bits of air in,
really do help.
Once it's on, just check around the inside,
in between the actual bead of the tire
and the inside wall of the rim there.
And make sure that none of the inner tube is poking out,
because if it is, when it comes to putting in more
and more pressure, that can quite often
give you a pinch puncture and those look like
a couple of snake bites, if you like.
So two holes, pretty close apart,
normally about a centimeter apart
and that's just the impact of the bead
and it's not allowing the tube to fully inflate,
of course, is it?
And this one, we're all okay.
Inner tube fitted and not pinched.
Now it's time to inflate that inner tube.
So unscrew your locking nut there on the valve
and either use a CO2 canister or a mini pump.
Now I'm not lazy enough, to be honest, today,
it's a beautiful day, to use the CO2 canister.
So I'm going to use a mini pump.
Now I've got a handy little gauge on here too,
so I know exactly how much pressure I'm putting in.
The great thing about using a mini pump actually,
in my opinion, something like this,
although on a lot of CO2 canisters you can do the same,
you can actually control how much air is going in
and at the same time, make sure that nothing
is getting trapped in between the tire
and the side of the rim.
Now once you have put a decent amount of pressure
into the tire, normally around about 40 or 50 psi,
you can have a look to make sure the tire
is seated onto the rim okay.
Now an easy way to do that is to use the side wall
as an indicator.
It should look the same all the way around,
just above the braking surface or edge of the rim.
Like it does on this one.
If it's not, you can simply wrestle it into position,
like so, with your thumbs.
Its kind of like wiggling it, just allow it to pop
into the right place.
There's no harm in doing it.
Normally though, just as you inflate it,
particularly at home with a Trent pump
it would just find its natural position.
But when we're out in the road, we don't have that luxury,
necessarily, but it's just worth doing it as a precaution.
Once you're happy that the tire is perfectly seated
onto the rim, it's just a case of reinflating
that inner tube to your desired pressure
before reinserting it into your bike.
(upbeat music)
The final piece of the jigsaw now
is just to refit the wheel into position.
Now I always like to do this without
the bike being turned upside down.
I see loads of people putting in wheels upside down
and while my reason for not doing it is
that you don't allow the bike to actually find
it's natural place onto the axle of a wheel
and also it's just not a natural thing to do, is it?
Because the loop of the chain on the rear inter alia
can often be quite confusing,
because it's not in its logical place.
So with all that aside then,
let's put the wheel into position.
And on this one here I've got myself a through axle.
So I'm just going to use the built-in
or sort of removable tool if you like to actually torque
that up correctly.
There we are.
How to fix a puncture on your bike at the side of the road.
And you don't even have to use a brand new inner tube.
How good is that?
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and well me, I'm going to carry on with my bike ride.
All the best.