Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Early Tuesday AM . . . . .

So on Tuesday, I was having a great ride at Middle Run before work. Trails were rock solid frozen with a coating of snow, but traction was even better because of the snow. About 30 minutes into it, the rear tire started feeling soft.

I have been running a Bontrager TLR wheelset and tire since March with no problems. Unfortunately, the Stan's Latex is also ten months old and did not seem up to the task of fixing the wheel. At least it did not at first. I turned the wheel so the leak was at the very bottom and the air stopped leaking. The tire was very soft by then though, so I had a choice to make. I took an inventory of supplies and I had 1 26 inch tube, 1 Co2, and 2 tire levers. My tubeless set-up has worked so well that I stopped bringing 2 air cartridges on rides. I even raced last Fall at Marsh Creek without a tube or Co2. My confidence had grown that much with the TLR set-up. After thinking about it for a minute or two, I decided I would shoot some air in the tire so I could continue my ride. Air it up. Hssssssssssss. Turns out the air stopped leaking because the snow filled the hole and the pressure was low enough that the air was holding until I put a respectable amount of air in there.


At that point, I decided I would put the tube in so I could continue to ride. I had some air left in the cartridge, so I went ahead and started taking the tire off the wheel. As the tire came off, much to my surprise I found this little guy ---------> living inside of my wheel. I also found some very thin Stan's fliud inside. I suspect this little dragon ate up a bunch of my fluid (look at how full his belly is!) and that is why the tire was not able to seal. Pesky little devil.

I had some trouble getting the 26 tube into the 29 wheel, but it went in finally. I aired it up and to my dismay, I did not have enough air left to fill the tire. I started to ride home, but the tire was very soft and in 200 feet, it was totally flat. Apparantly I pinched the tube when I re-installed the tire (or ten month old tubes taped to a stem do not remain to be good). Lucky for me the snowy ground mated well with a flat tire and I was able to ride home very slowly.

So now I will ride today with a regular tire and tube and hope that works out well for me. I need some new more Stan's latex and hopefully I will be able to patch the old tire with fresh fluid.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

James!

It's good to see your up and running again! Isabella is so big! It looks as if all is well with you. Yes. base training has begun here as well. Hope to see you at Baker's dozen, I'm not sure about Snotcycle yet...

-Trevor