I’ve come to realize over the last few years that when you put 20,000 miles on two wheels every year, you tend to pick up a lot of nails.  So, what do you do when you come out to the bike in the morning to see your rim an inch from the ground?  You patch it, that’s what.  Now, I’m not saying that the patch I’ll show you how to use here is a permanent solution.  To the contrary, the package of patch strings says exactly the opposite.  What I can tell you is that I’m going to patch a high-quality tire and monitor it daily as it continues to get use.

First, a disclaimer: don’t ever patch motorcycle tires.  They will deflate, overheat, rip apart, and eventually kill you.  While you’re at it, don’t ride motorcycles at all, as they’ll definitely kill you even if you put new tires on every week.

Now, with that aside, why do I feel it’s safe to use a patched tire?  Well, I don’t necessarily.  What I do know is that I’ve ridden for months on a punctured tire under the assumption that it was the valve stem that was bleeding air.  A few thousand miles later, I finally found the tiny finishing nail that had sunk its head below the tread surface and only leaked air when riding.  Quality tires are pretty impressive beasts.  Basically, you have a ring of steel belts or plies sandwiched between a whole bunch of layers of vulcanized rubber.

Vulcanized?

Yeah, vulcanization. You can read all about it over at Wikipedia; but what it really comes down to is that it’s good stuff that’s stuck together really really well.  We’re not talking about horse glue here folks.  Of course, there are stories of repaired tires ripping apart at speed, but there are also stories of wheels falling off, gas tanks exploding from static electricity, and rods being thrown through the head, seat pan, and rider.  None of these stories are going to keep me off my bikes.

Alright, so we’ve got a punctured tire and we’re going to patch it. What do we need to do?  Well, first things first:

Find the Leak

If you’re really well off, you’ll have a dunk tank in your garage and you can just air up the tire, dump the whole wheel in the tank, and watch for bubbles.  Well, if you have dunk tank, you’re probably not here reading this article on how to patch a tire.  Furthermore, you don’t really want to take the wheel off you bike, do you?  I didn’t think so.

You’re going to need two things to find the leak:

• A source of air with which to inflate your leaky tire
  
• Some fluid that makes bubbles when you shake it up
  

For my source of air, I use a Craftsman 30 gallon shop compressor.  (Which just so happens to be one of the best things I have ever purchased.)  For bubble-fluid, most people recommend dishsoap in water.  It works quite well.  For this particular experience, I used a bottle of Method glass cleaner as I happened to have some in the car I drove over to the garage.

Line the bike up someplace where you have a good amount of light showing on the tread of the appropriate tire.  Put the bike up on the center stand.  Fill the tire up to the top rated pressure.  Spray the entire tire with bubble-fluid.  Start turning the tire and looking over the surface.  Eventually, you’ll come across what looks like an acid leak from MacGyver.

Once you’ve found that, the hard part is over.  Let the air out of the tire:

Now that the air is out and the tire is nice and inert, it’s time to break out the patch kit.  I got my Slime Deluxe Tire Plug Kit at Walmart for a whopping $9.  As you can see, it comes with an awl/reamer, some rubber cement, a glorified latch-hook thing, and a small selection of gummy worms.  At the time of writing, you could get giant packs of more worms than you would ever use for $8 on the next rack over.

Now for the fun part.  Break out your awl/reamer and jam in into the puncture.  This will take some muscle.  Make sure the bike doesn’t try to get away from you.  Once you’ve got it in, work it in and out a few times to really clean out the wound.

Once you’ve got the hole good and clean, get yourself a gummy worm and thread it into the latch-hook looking thing.  If you weren’t sure of the efficacy of these string kits up to this point, you’ll be convinced once you get your hands on one of the worms.  They’re coated in some pretty interesting stuff.  Once you’ve got the worm threaded into the latch-hook thing, you want to coat it with rubber cement.  You don’t need a whole lot of cement as honestly, you’re using it as much for lubrication as you are for anything else.  I put a thin bead across the top of the worm and worked it around with my fingers until I no longer stuck to the worm.

Now, shove the worm-loaded latch-hook into the puncture.  Make sure at least an inch of each tail stays sticking out of the hole.

Now, pull the hook straight out of the hole.  Be especially careful not to twist or you might kink the worm which could lead to leaking (which is exactly what we’re trying to prevent in the first place, right?)  If you do it right, you’ll be left with something that looks vaguely like this:

Now, cut the plug off even with the tread, air up the tire, and spray down the repair area with bubble-fluid.  If you don’t get another cheesy 80’s acid leak, then you’re probably good to go.  As of today, I have 30 miles on my patched tire and everything is holding just fine.