So TIREd

How to repair a tire in 2 minutes

2012-01-17 how to fix a punctured tire
2009-01-22 original post

Patching tires
After less than 8000 km my rear MAXXIS tire is without profile.
That is a very bad for just lousy 8000 km. Ok more then 50% was with a pillion and it is mostly 20-30 degrees and full sun, so the streets are warm. But 8000 km, what a shitty quality.

Now since we have nearly no rain here, I can drive safely without profile for a while, but the tire lost air.
It is interesting that I actually could ride 2 up with the air below 1 bar and the Spidermax still behaved quite nice, just a bit soft in curves.
Finding the culprit was not to hard,but I also found that the tire was patched before.



Now with the help of a tire repair kit I could fix the leak easily.


The plug looks a bit weird and I cut of as much as possible from the protruding material.


Sadly the patched tire still lost air after one day. With the help of soapy water I found a tiny hole without anything sticking in it and did patch job number 2.
The next day my tire was still losing air. Soapy water again showed that now the old patch (lasted so far over 4000km before the 2 new holes) was loosing air.
Well a not proper inflated tire deforms permantly during the driving and thus were loosening the glued in plug a tiny bit.
So I took out the old plug


Looks quite impressive the new hole now. I inserted a new plug, wowing that if the tire would still lose air it would be replaced instantly: Apparently this worked since the air is now holding.

Now tracking down a rear tire 150/70 16" for the Spidermax is nearly impossible here on the island. Thank you Malaguty for having a tire size what no one else has. How about just a bit smaller 140/70 16" and I could use the Piaggio Bererly tire. It looks only MAXXIS and Pirelli making this tire size.
150/70-16 M/C 68S TL SPORT DEMON Pirelli
So far so bad, well I found a dealer who could track down the only tire here on the island and it is a MAXXIS (hurray). For 150 Euro plus 14 Euro montage it can be mine. I am so looking forward replacing the front tire 120/80-16" ...

Looks like I might be able to substitute the 150/70 16" with:
BRIDGESTONE EXEDRA 150/80-16 G703 TUBLES FT TIRE
Dunlop D404 150/80-16 Metzeler ME 880 Marathon 150/80-16
After the tire lost air agian I had it changed at 9700 km.


2009.12.23
The new Maxxis tire showed the replacement marks (see first picture center on the right side) at 8000 km again. Since this tire has no defects so far, I intend to see how long it can be driven before I absolutely have to replace it. Since this is a bit of a risky thing to do, I check the tire every time before I use the Spidermax for defects and poke the center of the tire with the key to see how soft the rubber still is. If I should come to the critical zone, there should be no more flexing of rubber.

I already nearly doubled the millage I got from this Maxxis. Please keep in mind, that there is virtually no rain where I ride and if we have rain a few times a year, I drive with extreme caution like yesterday when we had to tour the mountains to see the waterfalls we get after heavy rain.



2012-01-17
How to fix a punctured tire
What is it with January and me getting punctured tires?
A couple days ago I checked the tire pressure and it was 1.8 in the rear where 2.3 should have been.
Today I checked again since the bike felt a bit soft in the curves and I had 1.0 in the rear tire. WOW that is bad. At home I checked for a reason why the tire lost air and finally found a little silver dot in the tire.

find and remove the nail

check if the hole

if it is a small size hole use one ot these to wide it a bit more

use the puncture kit round file fo widen the hole a bit more and roughen the inside wall

a  few times more

tire puncture kit

stick the  plug into the placement tool and  put rubber glue around

stick the plug into the tire

pull out placement tool - don´t worry, the plug stays in - trim the plug and inflate the tire -done