- The most common mechanical problem,
and probably the most frustrating to getting a ride,
is getting a puncture.
But today, we'll look at a few tips,
little bike setup hacks, and things you can buy
to make them almost disappear.
So this is how to avoid punctures.
So, number one, the first thing I would recommend
is going tubeless, if you've not done already.
So this is gonna get rid of pinch punctures, sort of.
But what it's really gonna get rid of
is getting a puncture through riding over something sharp,
like a thorn.
So now, rather than going through the tire
and into the tube,
actually you're going to have sealant inside that tire,
and that's gonna roll around,
and that is designed to fill those little gaps.
So, snake bites.
That's what I'm talking about pinch punctures.
When you've gotta tube inside the tire,
when you hit an obstacle like a rock,
it's actually gonna bottom out that tire and tube
on the rim, and that's where you get that pinch.
But without a tube, of course, you don't get that.
However, you can still sort of get these snake-bite tires
if you hit the tire really hard into an obstacle,
you're actually gonna damage that tire.
But it's much harder than actually pinching a tube,
and there are ways to fix this.
The first way is to carry one of these plug kits.
So if the rip is about the right size,
they're brilliant, these kits.
You can just stuff it in there, and they last forever.
They'll last the lifetime of that tire.
Of course if they're too big,
if it's anything more than a centimeter or two,
then you're gonna have to repair that tire properly,
but that is quite rare.
Now, I always go to the higher end of what they recommend
on the milliliters for the tire's size,
but I just think it helps the tire seal that bit better.
And with more of this stuff sloshing around,
yes, it's gonna be heavier, but it's gonna prevent punctures
that little bit better.
Also, not all tubeless sealant is equal.
You'll find some cheaper brands.
It just goes off much quicker, and it's just thinner stuff.
It doesn't fill holes quite as well.
If you're using tubes inside your tires,
and you're regularly getting snake bite punctures,
that is a pinch, what I would do is look inside your wheel
and check your rim tapes.
If it's damaged or there's any missing,
actually the tube can get damaged on those spoke heads.
So you can get proper cycle rim tape,
or you can use gaffer tape,
or my old favorite, electrical tape.
Now aside from tubes, I think the next most important fix
for getting less punctures,
is just to pump your tires harder.
Now, me and Steve actually had a really good chat
with multiple World Downhill Champion, Fabian Barel,
in France last winter.
And he said that all downhill racers could avoid punctures
if they just pumped their tires up to 60 PSI.
Of course, there's some truth in that,
but that's not very practical
because you're not gonna get any grip
with your tires being that hard.
So practically, for most riders,
I think a good tire pressure range
is somewhere between 18 and 30 PSI.
Most riders will probably find themselves happiest
in that low-20s to high-20 PSIs.
But I find myself, in certain situations,
on really rough tracks,
where I maybe haven't got a spare tube,
and I'll just pump my tire up something like 32,
maybe even up to 35 PSI.
It's definitely going to lower the performance of the tire,
but it might save me from getting abandoned
in the middle of nowhere.
So a great fix for avoiding punctures,
but maybe not the most practical,
is just to put more air in your tires.
However, I do think that heavier riders,
and I'm talking about riding style as much as body-weight,
will wanna go up to these higher pressures
to try and avoid these pinch punctures.
But that won't necessarily completely solve it.
I think heavier riders might want to go to a tougher tire,
so let's do some tire chat.
If heavier riders are puncturing an awful lot
with some cross country tires,
what I would do is just get a tougher tire
with more side-wall support.
So a lot of riders,
even with 140 mil travel or 160 mil travel bikes
would benefit from running two-ply downhill tires.
Personally, if I took this Enduro bike, 170 mil travel,
to the Alps or somewhere like Wester,
where there's lots of break and bumps, lots of rocks,
I would chuck on some two-ply downhill tires.
The rest of the time, I'm happy with my trail tires.
Right, let's talk TPI, threads per inch.
So this is Continental's downhill tire.
It's the top of the range, the toughest tire they make.
It's 27.5 by 2.4.
So we've got layers of nylon casing in here.
And the more threads per inch, the tougher it is.
And underneath this tire, we've got six layers
of 360 thread per inch nylon casing.
And on the side, let me look at my notes,
you've got 4 layers of 240.
So it's the toughest tire they make,
but it's also the heaviest.
It's 1,300 grams just for one.
So now we're going to the Kaiser Projekt, so a lighter tire.
Same tread as you see on the downhill tire.
But now, rather than having two plies of rubber,
we've got one ply and a protection layer, which is lighter.
We've gone to an aramid bead, so it's folded,
as you can see, which is lighter, again.
Less stable, but easy to store, and lighter, of course.
That's the main reason.
But now we've gone down to four layers
of 240 TPI nylon casing underneath the tread,
and three layers of 180 in the sidewall, saving 350 grams,
so that's the tire of choice for many Enduro racers.
On probably the less gnarly trails,
they might even go back to a downhill tire
for some of those races.
From the Kaiser down to what I would call a trail tire.
The new Mountain Kings, that's the 27 five by 2.3,
and that's lighter again.
It's 705 grams and the same TPI as the Kaiser.
Now let's look at the lightest on the scale here
with a cross-country tire.
For the Race King, a super fast, light-weight,
cross-country tire.
Rolling resistance'll be minimal on this.
Same TPI again though.
Four layers of 240 underneath the tread,
three layers of 180 on the sidewall.
Much less rubber now, we're down to 545 grams,
so less than half the weight of one of these downhill tires.
So that's gonna be great for cross-country riding.
It's gonna suit most riders perfectly for that.
However, if you're riding rougher terrain,
really gnarly stuff, then it isn't gonna work
like this tire in that situation.
So, tire choice individually for your riding style
is gonna be super, super important.
And if you are riding rocky terrain,
maybe think about going up to a tougher tire.
One final point on tire choice is that I know some people
will choose their tire going off the weight,
and actually choose to have a heavier tire,
knowing that for a tough tire,
it's gonna have to weigh about a kilo
or even more for the toughest downhill race tires.
So with age, tires will become more flimsy.
And that means the sidewalls can get a bit worn out
and move around.
And if you puncture and ride that tire flat
that will also damage it.
But also, just the case of having less tread on the tire
means there's less material between obstacles and your rim,
meaning punctures can happen more often.
Right, now to tire inserts.
Now we've seen these sort of appear in the last few years.
And they're trying to prevent punctures, of course.
These really are aimed at sort of Enduro, downhill riders,
and pro racers, more than anyone,
but even e-bikes are really great applications
for these things.
They're all trying to fix the same problem
in slightly different ways.
But one thing they do really offer for racers
is the ability to ride even with a puncture.
So we see a lot of downhill racers with these.
And although they do probably lose a bit of time,
they can get to the finish and score valuable points.
So we've got things like these MrWolf Bangers,
we've got CushCores, we've got Schwalbe PROCOREs.
You've even got homemade things like pool noodle foam,
all trying to stop these problems of getting punctures.
So something like the CushCore,
you've got that foam material that goes round the tire,
or I'm not quite sure if it is foam,
but it's kind of plasticky foam.
So that offers damping.
So it does affect the ride of the bike as well.
And you've got like two double air pockets.
It's just like a normal tire,
you can then adjust the pressure in there.
Then since we have to let you run less pressure
in your tire, you've still got the stability.
That's the same with all these inserts, to be fair.
And it just means you've got more material there,
again, between your rim and your tire.
So for really heavy riding, downhill racing,
that's gonna be better for preventing punctures.
However, of course you're adding
quite a lot of weight.
To wheels, spinning weight it quite important.
However, some of these manufacturers say
that you can run a lighter weight tire.
So get rid of your two plies
and run a single ply tire in there.
It remains to be seen if that actually prevents punctures
more than just running the two ply tire.
Back in the day when I raced World Cup in the early 2000's,
the factory Michelin racers like Steve Pete,
had these foam innertubes.
So that tube was made of this sort of weird foam,
it was probably about 5 mil thick,
that really didn't hold air very well.
You'd have to pump them every day,
but they did almost stop punctures.
You could still pinch them, but they were super good ideas.
But a lot of these solutions really are aimed at racers
and the heaviest of riders who don't mind
adding a bit of extra weight to their wheels.
They're probably not going to suit most mountain bikers.
Last, but definitely not least,
is trying to make your riding smoother.
I'm sure we've all got that friend who rides
like a Tasmanian Devil, super heavy on the bike.
Jack, I'm looking at you behind the camera,
and Blake, in fact.
They're just aggressive riders, and they punish their tires,
and they will puncture them.
So if you don't mind backing off a level,
or just trying to be smoother, trying to hop things,
trying to be lighter on the bike,
that will give you less punctures.
Okay, so there's some of my tips
for helping to avoid punctures.
I'd love to hear yours.
Stick 'em down below.
Ones I may not've listed there.
But also I'd like to know about your homemade contraptions
you've made for inserts.
My preferred method has always been
to run a fairly light-weight tire,
so on this bike I've just got those Barons,
the Enduro tires.
I run fairly high pressure, slightly higher than most.
But it's something I've got used to,
so I run up to anything like 30 PSI,
and I've just adapted my riding to it.
Maybe not perfect, but that's what I really like to do.
It keeps the bike fairly lightweight as well.
If you wanna see a couple more videos,
see Blake hooning a hardtail at Westchester,
on anything's possible, on one of those things,
click over there for that one.
For 89's by numbers, click up there.
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