Post #1998: Done in by a push pin.

 

Yesterday morning, while out for a bike ride, I ran over the above-pictured push-pin, in the parking lot of a park.  Despite its small size, it had no problem going right through the tread of my bike’s rear tire.

Mirabile dictu, I was able to get home before the tire went fully flat.

As my reward, I spent the next hour replacing the tube in my rear tire.  But at least I could cuss and sweat on my own back porch, instead of at the side of the road.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike.  But you surely can forget how to fix one.  The whole affair was a bit of a learning experience.


1:  Changing the tube in my back tire made me feel like a kid again.

Barely competent, and unsure of my ability to get by in the world.

But perhaps your childhood differed from mine.

In any case, I can still change a rear bike tire all by myself.  There was a fair bit of head-scratching involved, due to the unusual construction and tight clearances of my semi-recumbent bike.

But, in the end, I replaced the inner tube without breaking anything.

Source:  Wikipedia.

Except the Third Commandment.  (Or Second, depending on what you consider to be the theologically-correct numbering system.)

When it comes to moving rusty nuts and bolts, I consider a liberal amount of swearing to be at least as helpful as a liberal dosing with penetrating oil.  Neither one actually affects the rusted parts, they just give you the courage to twist harder on those parts than you otherwise would.

And, in any case, God seems to treat the breaking of Commandments much as our judicial system treats crimes by the rich and powerful.  The penalties for transgression are theoretical in nature, and if they occur, will happen so far in the distant future that they provide no practical deterrent to behavior in the present.

So, overall, it was a win.  This push-pin cut my bike ride short, but I confirmed that I can replace a bike inner tube using only the tools I routinely carry when I bike.

That was a nice surprise.


2:  Inevitable surprise

 

Post #1853: Urban bicycling really is as dangerous as it looks.

Bit of an oxymoron, that.

This minor random mishap reminded me of the events discussed in Post #1853, linked above, regarding a young woman who was killed while bicycling in a Maryland bike lane.  A truck turned right, across the bike lane, and ran into her.  Five seconds sooner, or five seconds later, and she’d have had no problem.

Similarly, this particular tire puncture depended on an almost comically improbable series of events.  Within my randomly-chosen bike route, across the entire width of an empty parking lot, a half-inch to either side and I’d have missed that push-pin.

But if you bike enough miles, you’ll run into your share of punctures.

And, like clockwork, about 1,000 bicyclists a year die in accidents in the U.S.  Year in, year out.

It’s a fair bet that each and every one of them was surprised by it.  Yet the overall rate remains rock-steady.

Weirdly, the flip side of that combination — the improbability of any one event, yet the stability of an average rate of such events — is that I must be having near-misses all the time.  Hundreds of tacks that I passed by but didn’t run over, for every one that I did.

And, correspondingly, accidents that would have happened but for a few minutes’ or seconds’ difference here or there.

It’s just the way it is.  You’ll typically never know how lucky you were.

May the odds be ever in your favor.


3:  The psychological benefits from owning emergency supplies that have quietly gone bad.

After I had put a new tube in that tire, I decided to patch the old one and keep that for a spare.  Rather than haul myself to the bike store for a new tube.  And as a consequence of that, I corrected a misunderstanding that I had had since I was a kid.

I thought that an un-opened metal tube of tire patch glue would last forever.

I was off by roughly infinity minus four years.  The tube of glue in my patch kit appeared pristine and flexible, but the solvent had evaporated long ago.  The tube of glue looked and felt perfect.  Still flexible, no leaks.  Only when I punctured the spout and squeezed did I realize that it had joined the choir invisible some years before.  Nothing came out.

Now that I look in detail at bike tube patch kits, the shelf life of an unopened tube of rubber cement is maybe  four years, when stored outside.

The upshot is that I had been carrying around a useless patch kit for years. 

Or, more likely, decades, given the indirect evidence.  My econometric clock says that I likely purchased this patch kit some time around the turn of century.  My kit, with a price tag of $3, currently sells for $5 and change on Amazon.

The fact that this was clearly purchased at a bricks-and-mortar retailer is just another blast from the past.  One with price stickers, yet.  They were a thing.  Look it up if you don’t believe me.

And yet, until today, carrying that patch kit on my bike gave me a sense of security.

Which means that, oddly enough, I was better off carrying a useless patch kit than carrying no kit at all. 

To be clear, if I’d known I had no way to patch a flat, I’d have been worried.  But with a (useless) patch kit on board, I never gave flat tires a second thought.

Rabbits’ feet.  Amulets.  Lucky charms.  Inner tube patch kits.

It’s all about the power of belief.


4:  Why do I even have a wet-glue tube patch kit?

The unfortunate answer is, because I’m old. And, like so many things, technology changed when I wasn’t paying attention.

The unusable patch kit was a wet-glue patch, requiring application of liquid contact cement (or rubber cement or sometimes a mysterious “vulcanizing fluid”), plus a peel-n-stick patch.   Patching inner tubes this way — gluing on a bit of rubber using rubber cement — goes back at least a century.

But now, there are so-called pre-glued patches, where no wet glue is required.  Just peel-n-stick. 

As it turns out, I owned both types of repair kits, from the same manufacturer (Park Tool).  Unlike the wet-glue kit, pre-glued patch kits remain good almost indefinitely.  My pre-glued patches were still good, and ultimately I patched the tube using a pre-glued patch.

Pre-glued patches are also faster and easier to use.  Lightly sand the area around the hole clean, peel-n-stick, and press firmly into place.  (The Park Tool patches are clear.  This makes it easy to chase any air bubbles out from under the patch.)

Plus, there are no fumes, no messy glue, no waiting for the glue to dry or cure.  No short-lived tubes of glue, period.

So that raises an obvious question:  If pre-glued patches are faster, easier, and have a longer shelf life, why do wet-glued inner tube patches still exist?

The internet tells me that old-style wet-glued patches are viewed as permanent, while pre-glued patches are viewed as temporary. They are expected to leak, eventually.  So if you want to fix your inner tube permanently, you need to use a wet (rubber-cement-style) patch.

OK, why even bother to patch a bicycle inner tube?  (Other than for expediency, I mean — for the second or later flat occurring on a given bike ride.  Assuming you carry a spare inner tube when you bike.)

Answer:  Once up on a time, a bicycle inner tube was an expensive piece of equipment.  Here’s the entry from the 1918 Sears and Roebuck catalog.  The roughly $1 standard inner tube of that day equates to over $22 today.  So, back when wet-patching tubes was the norm,  an inner tube would have made a rather expensive disposable item.

Source:  Sears 1918 catalog is currently accessible from https://christmas.musetechnical.com/

Back in the modern world, I can pick up a replacement inner tube on Amazon for $5.  Or less than the cost of a single-use wet-glue patch kit.  Based on how frequently I have bike flats, and the short shelf life of the glue in a wet-patch kit, it’s actually cheaper for me to throw the tube away, than to buy and use a new wet patch kit every time I have a flat.  (New, because the glue will most definitely go bad after a short while, once the tube has been opened.)


Conclusion:  Time to join the modern world.

The upshot of this post is that my whole approach to flats on a bike was outmoded.  I carry a spare tube.  In addition, I should carry some pre-glued patches as a backup.

At the rate at which I get flats, it never did make sense to carry a wet-glue patch kit.  Not even a fresh one, that would actually work.  I just didn’t realize it until I tried to use the long-deceased kit that I had been faithfully carrying on my bike since roughly the turn of the century.

Alternatively, I’ve looked into modern tire sealants such as Slime (r) and similar.   They get mixed reviews, and they may have limited effectiveness in high-pressure tires.  But the worst part is that bike tire sealants have a shorter shelf life than a wet-patch kit.  Slime (and other self-sealing tubes) recommend replacing the tube every two years.

And I know what that means.  If I went to the trouble to install self-sealing tubes, I would undoubtedly treat it as a one-and-done.  So that when I had a flat, N years from now, they would no longer work.

Much the same as my wet-patch kit.

Sometimes the right solution isn’t about the technology, it’s about eliminating the potential for operator error.


Extras for Experts 1:  My wife’s solution to a bicycle flat tire.

So here I am, trying to drag my thinking out of last century, abandoning wet-patch kits for flat bike tires.

I made the mistake of asking my wife what she would like me to do with the repair kit on her bike.

Because, you know, you’d hate to be stranded by a flat, miles from home.

She looked at me like I was a moron, pulled out her phone, and gave me the one-word answer above.

Apparently my brain has not fully absorbed the development of cell phones.  Because in this entire process, that option never even occurred to me.

In any case, the lesson here is that a flat bike tire, in an urban area, miles from home, is hardly the disaster it was in decades past.


Extras for Experts 2:  Primordial Slime

I thought that Fix-a-Flat, Slime, and similar leak-stopping chemicals were a modern invention.

Not so, per the same Sears catalog referenced above.  They’ve been around since at least the WWI era.

Even stranger, this ancient Slime(r)-equivalent advertised leak-stopping fibers, exactly as some Slime products do today.  Except that in 1918, the fibers were proudly noted as being asbestos.

Post #1934: No spare tire? When did this happen?

 

You buy into new tech, you expect certain aspects of your life to change.

Buy a Chevy Bolt, and part of the deal is that you stop saying “gas pedal” for the accelerator.  Likewise, “step on the gas” is no longer a valid request.

I guess I should have seen it coming.  But I now wonder how long it will be before the phrase “spare tire” goes the way of “cigarette lighter socket”.


Flat tire?  Use OnStar

The Chevy Bolt provides absolutely nothing for dealing with a flat tire.  It has taken me a while to get my mind around why they did that.  And no, I don’t think it’s just to sell OnStar services.

Era 1:  Ancient history, the true spare tire.

Standard equipment:  Full-service tire and rim, jack, lug wrench.

Back in the day, cars came with five functional rims, and five full-sized tires.  One of those was the spare tire. If you had a flat you could drive on your spare more-or-less indefinitely.  Because your spare was a real tire.

In most cases, you could use any of the five tires/rims, on front or back, or either side of the car.  This, despite whatever folklore you may have absorbed.  This, per the standard method for “rotating the tires”, according to the experts at Bridgestone tires, among others.  (Directional tires — those that have a forward direction of rotation — are the exception.)

Source:  tirerack.com

Era 2:  The limited-service, compact, or doughnut spare

Standard equipment:  Limited-service tire and rim, jack, lug wrench.

Sometime in the 1980s, car makers began to replace the full-sized spare with a “compact spare”.  This was an era when cars were shrinking, gas mileage was at a premium, and competition from foreign manufacturers was intense.  Credit for the first compact spare apparently goes to Volkswagen (reference).

Initially the compact spare was the mark of the econo-box, but eventually it became the norm.

Today, there are still plenty of cars that come with a full-sized spare tire standard, but these tend to run to be cars meant to have an “off road” look, as well as some top-end sedans.  If you buy your typical mid-size middle-of-the-road vehicle, chances are pretty good it comes with a compact spare.

To be honest, as tires got better over the years, and cars got smaller, I found that the full-sized spare was more of a nuisance than a comfort.  Improvements in manufacturing made tire sidewall “blowouts” a thing of the past.  Steel-belted radials made it far harder to get a flat by picking up a nail in the tread.  And, in general, tires just became a whole lot more reliable.  And the full-sized spare ended up just taking up space.

My wife’s 2005 Prius came with a doughnut spare.  We sneered at the time, but a) we used it several times so far, b) it works fine for getting the car to the tire shop, and c) little did we know what was coming up next.

Era 3:  Tire pump, Fix-a-Flat, and a prayer

Standard equipment:  Tire puncture repair kit.

My wife’s 2021 Prius Prime came with no spare at all.  Instead, Toyota provides a “tire puncture repair kit” which, as far as I can tell, consists of some tire sealant in a pressurized can, an electric air pump, and directions for use.

Prayer is optional but recommended.  And as I am a non-religious person, I tossed in an actual tire plugging kit as backup.

This is now the standard on all Prius models.  You don’t even get a doughnut spare,  In effect, you get a can of Fix-a-Flat, an electric tire pump that fits that can, and roughly 35-step directions for use.  I don’t think we even got a lug wrench or a jack, so there’s literally no way for us to take the tire off the car, unless we buy those tools separately. Edit:  Nope, Toyota hid them in an odd spot.  So, oddly, the car does come with jack and lug wrench, but no spare tire of any sort.  That’s a mixed message, for sure.

(For those unfamiliar with the product, Fix-a-Flat (r) is this pressurized goo that you can squirt into a flat tire, and, if all goes well, and you follow directions, it’ll seal the leak in the tire.  At least long enough for you to get to a service station.)

Era 4:  The Chevy Bolt:  Self-sealing tires and real-time tire pressure monitoring.

Standard equipment:  Nada.

The Chevy Bolt takes this to a new low, or new high, depending on your point of view.  Like the Prius Prime, the Chevy Bolt gives you no way to remove a wheel from the car.  No jack, no tire iron. But in addition, they give you no way to fix a flat, period.

Instead, the car comes with “self-sealing tires”.  Bicyclists familiar with the product “Slime” will grasp the concept.  In effect, they have pre-installed Fix-a-Flat, with the idea being that the goo already inside the tires it should seal holes up to about an eighth of an inch.  It also lets you see the tire pressures in real time, which I think would be handy if you’re trying to get a car with a low tire to a service station.

That’s the theory, anyway.  Plus, you are encouraged to subscribe to OnStar.  (I still haven’t figured out how to shut up the OnStar lady upon startup, so I just keep the volume on the radio turned off.)

I have of course put a 12 volt tire pump in the trunk of the Bolt.  Because, in my experience, “self-sealing” tires are more like slower-leaking tires.  It just takes them longer to go flat than if there were no sealant inside the tire.  So I do want to carry some way to inflate the tire.

But I’m thinking long and hard about buying a jack and lug wrench for it.  Not only is the Bolt a relative dense car — short wheelbase, but weighs more than two tons — it has some weird, non-standard jack points.  And Chevy is pretty cagey about just where, exactly, those jack points are, and what will fit.

Crazy as it sounds, to an old guy, Chevy engineers really don’t want the owners to jack up the car, to remove a tire.  And for once, I might just go along with the plan.

In any case, for this car, at least, I think I understand the lack of doughnut spare.  It’s a small, very heavy car.  (As a result, it has a stiff and sometimes uncomfortable suspension, to take all that weight.)  There wouldn’t be a lot of wheel travel with a doughnut spare.  And I think you’d put your battery down too close to the road to be comfortable.

So, on a Prius, if you hit a pothole with the doughnut spare, you might ding a little sheet metal.  With a Bolt, you’ve got some great big battery modules there on the underside of the car.  And I suspect Chevy was a little hesitant to put just a doughnut spare between those and the road surface.


Conclusion

Having had cars with a full-sized spare, a doughnut spare, and no spare, I think the doughnut spare hits the global optimum.  You really only need something that will give you a few miles of travel, a few times in the life of the car.  Just enough to get you home, or to a tire-repair shop.  Dedicating a full-sized tire and rim to that task is wasteful, and overkill.

But no spare?  I’m not too keen on that.  With the Prius Prime, there really is no place to put a doughnut spare.  So I guess I’ll accept Toyota’s puncture repair kit as a necessary evil.  On the Bolt, I can see why Chevy’s engineers might have wanted to avoid a doughnut spare, owing to a very dense, small car with critical components located in the floor of the vehicle.   I’m still not sure why they’ve gone so far out of their way to make it difficult for the Bolt owner to remove a wheel.

In either case — the Prime or the Bolt — I can definitely imagine a situation where I’d want to take the wheel off the car, to get a tire repaired.  That’s a lot less stress on the vehicle than towing the car, just to get a nail puncture repaired.  And right now, that’s not possible, given what the manufacturer supplies with the car.  Not sure what I’m going to do about it.

But this seems to be the trend.  Just as my kids thought I was kidding when I called the 12V power outlet under the dash the “cigarette lighter socket”, someday, when an old guy refers to somebody’s fat gut as a spare tire, none of the younger people are going to have the faintest idea what he’s talking about.

Addendum:  Notes to self on adding donut spares.

Upon further research, nope, no way I can be comfortable driving a care without a spare tire.  Not when I can remedy the situation for a modest expense.

For the 2021 Prius Prime:  The car actually does have a jack, just stowed in an odd place (in a compartment under the back seat).  By report, the tire puncture repair kit is to be used only as a last resort, as using it will kill the tire pressure sensor and require that to be replaced.  By report, the same donut spare fits all regular Prius models from 2004 to 2022.  But the 2017 and later models use a larger, 17″ rim, compared to the earlier models with a 16″ rim.  Experts say you’re better off getting the proper donut for the vehicle.  The Prime still has no place to put a compact spare, and several drivers report tucking it behind a front seat for long trips.  But all we need to do is pick up a donut spare from a junkyard, for any standard Prius model in that range of years,.

For the 2020 Bolt, I’ve already ordered a Chevy S10 jack, from a model year that has the right “button” top jack plate to fit the jack points on the Bolt.  Rumor has it that a Chevy Cruze (2010-2019, excluding diesels!) donut spare will fit the Bolt, with its odd 5/105 bolt pattern.  (The Cruze diesel had slightly larger wheels with a 5/115 bolt pattern).  Everyone says that, owing to the radically smaller diameter of the compact spare (compared to the normal wheel and tire), the compact spare should not be used to replace the front tires (but instead, tires should be shuffled as needed so that a compact spare is used on the rear, in the event of a flat).  The Bolt actually has a wheel well designed to hold a compact spare, but Chevy blocked off part of it, and a spare will only fit completely if stored deflated. 

The upshot is that we’re shopping our local junkyards and/or Ebay for his-‘n’-hers used donut spares, so that when we have a flat, we have some option other than getting towed.

Addendum to Addendum:  I bought some donuts.

Last night I bought what I hope are the relevant donut spare tires off Ebay, having already Ebay’ed a jack/lug wrench for a Chevy S10, to fit the Bolt.  This was more expensive than scrounging the junkyards, but far less expensive than buying a generic boutique “spare nouveu” off Amazon.

The deciding factors in going with the internet were age and fit.  I wanted tires in good shape, because tires degrade over time.  (I didn’t want to buy a donut and immediately have to replace the tire.)  And for the Prius, the rim fit was fairly important.  I only wanted a donut from the latest Prius models, not earlier ones, which means fewer wrecks in the junkyard.

Really, it was like anything else — these days, you get a better selection off the internet than you do in person.  You just pay for it.  When all was said and done, I figured I had a better chance of success picking among 20 or 30 current offerings for each donut on Ebay, than I did driving out to my nearest you-pick junkyard and managing to find exactly what I was after.

On balance, it’s probably a little bit wasteful to carry around that donut spare, when both manufacturers say you don’t need it.  Mostly.  But in the end, I realized the internal inconsistency of stocking a car with disaster preparedness supplies (Post #1628), and then not having any functioning spare.  So I spent a bit of money to fix that.

Case closed.