Cautionary tale...

[KnackeredBike]

In my bicycle repair man toolkit I kept a pump that came free with some tools. It clearly wasn't the most amazing but I figured good enough to get me to limp to somewhere with a track pump.

In about 40,000km of riding on Conti Gatorskins I have only had two punctures, one close enough to walk to a LBS and one yesterday about 200m from work.

Went to repair the puncture at lunchtime. Repair kit worked great but the bloody pump wouldn't get the tyre even moderately inflated. Then in frustration I ended up snapping the plastic Presta adapter at the end of it.

Luckily an LBS is only 20mins walk from work and I now have a Pro Performance which I have tested and goes get to decent pressures.

tl;dr Test your emergency repair kit before you need to use it in the middle of nowhere!

(I considered CO2 inflater but I much prefer to repair rather than replace the tube as I find it quicker and less likely to leave something sharp in the tyre (3mm shard of flint yesterday). I think that would be harder to do with CO2.)

 

[johnnyb47]

There a bit hit and miss those mini pumps. I bought one last week from Aldi. Its got a pressure gauge on it and in all fairness I'm not impressed with it. I think I'll stick to my full sized Beto frame mounted pump. It looks unsightly but it works really well when its needed.

 

[Slick]

I realise it's just a preference, but you can repair and still use C02.

 

[NorthernDave]

A lesson most of us have learned the hard way - it's much easier to test stuff / figure out how it works at home rather than at the roadside.

 

[vickster]

My lezyne one did well this morning after a flat in the same tube I changed before leaving the house . That's a dead new tube with a big hole by the valve

 

[si_c]

I had the same pump as @johnnyb47 but it was uniformly terrible in HP mode, ok for an MTB, but not so good for a road tyre. It's currently in a bush somewhere in Warrington after I got really angry following my sixth puncture, the last two of which were pinch flats because the pump couldn't get enough pressure into it. The first three I fixed and used CO2 to inflate.

 

[mjr]

Other favourites are discovering your tyre levers aren't strong enough to get that particular tyre off of that particular rim, or that your spanner or Allen keys are too short to free particular bolts.

Oh, and that your chain breaker doesn't fit 10-speed or single speed chain.

Always always always test new roadside tools at home.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

[QUOTE="mjr, post: 4916885,

Always always always test new roadside tools at home.[/QUOTE]

Also make sure you've packed it as well, coming to a halt on a country lane with a split inner tube and finding my spare tube missing spoilt a recent ride for me. I managed to patch the tube and get home, where I found the spare tube on the shed floor.

 

[Randy Butternubs]

My brother and I rented a pair of mountain bikes recently. I was a couples of miles downhill from him when he got a flat and of course I had the one pump they had provided. After grinding back up to meet him we found they had provided him with a 27.5" schrader tube and he needed presta. So we stuffed the 29" presta tube we had in place and only then found out that the mini pump pumped in reverse! It was feebly trying to suck air out of the tube and expelling it out the back.

He elected to ride the rest of the way down on a flat tyre which is not something I even want to see someone doing again. I was behind him the whole way watching the tyre leap away from the rim with every revolution.

 

[aferris2]

Also check that everything is still working. My road morph needed a lot of persuasion to pump up a tyre having sat on the frame of the commuter all winter.

 

[NorthernDave]

[QUOTE="mjr, post: 4916885,

Always always always test new roadside tools at home.

Also make sure you've packed it as well, coming to a halt on a country lane with a split inner tube and finding my spare tube missing spoilt a recent ride for me. I managed to patch the tube and get home, where I found the spare tube on the shed floor.[/QUOTE]

Not that long ago, I inadvertently rode round for three weeks with no spare tubes in my saddle bag. Which could have been interesting...

 

[KnackeredBike]

@Randy Butternubs I have taken the tyre off and ridden on the rear rims in an emergency before. Very loud but it works. It's relatively easy to sort out the rim with a file because of course you can spin it up with one hand and file with the other.

 

[KnackeredBike]

@Randy Butternubs I have taken the tyre off and ridden on the rear rims in an emergency before. Very loud but it works. It's relatively easy to sort out the rim with a file because of course you can spin it up with one hand and file with the other.

 

[BorderReiver]

Despite not riding deep section rims I have discovered in the past (the hard way!) that some valve stems are longer than others...