Broken glass :<

In article <[email hidden]>

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime innertubes are useless - they
just puncture and cause a flourescent green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating from the
shattered glass that litters my route?

The newer airless tyres are supposed to be a lot better than their
predecessors, I only have experience of older designs that were pretty
nasty.

http://www.greentyre.co.uk/
http://hancox.co.uk/amerityre.html

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime innertubes are useless - they
just puncture and cause a flourescent green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating from the
shattered glass that litters my route?

Schwalbe Marathon Plus. Take a look at

http://tinyurl.com/tzwvz

which for the more regulars appears updated since I last looked and full
of useful tyre stuff. Quick summary, Plus for puncture fairy defense,
XR for longevity.

This service brought to you by a Schwalbe Pimp.

Tosspot said:

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've
offered me the best protection against broken glass on my daily
commute. I'm still getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime
innertubes are useless - they just puncture and cause a flourescent
green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating
from the shattered glass that litters my route?

Schwalbe Marathon Plus. Take a look at

http://tinyurl.com/tzwvz

which for the more regulars appears updated since I last looked and full
of useful tyre stuff. Quick summary, Plus for puncture fairy defense,
XR for longevity.

This service brought to you by a Schwalbe Pimp.

Oh yes, I'd definitely recommend the Schwalbe marathon. With such good
puncture resistance that, when I finally did have to get a repair kit
out the tube of solution looked full, but when squeezed all that emerged
was a puff of vapour!

--
Roger Thorpe

My email address is spamtrapped. You can work it out!

KoperniK wrote on 23/10/2006 23:29 +0100:

Quoted message said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime innertubes are useless - they
just puncture and cause a flourescent green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating from the
shattered glass that litters my route?

Cheers 🙂

Jon

Try rigging some tyre savers on your wheels. If they are slicks, a loop
of gear wire resting on the surface at the top of the wheel should do
it. It will pull out any bits of glass stuck in the tyre as soon as they
are picked up rather than carrying them round and round pushing them
further and further into the tyre each time they meet the road. Used to
be very common but they seem to have gone out of fashion these days.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime innertubes are useless - they
just puncture and cause a flourescent green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating from the
shattered glass that litters my route?

Armadillos are A1 tyres in terms of resilience IMO/IME. Am worried by
your post; a puncture a fortnight would drive me beyond sanity.

Only additional advice I can offer is to stay off the cycle-paths 🙂

In article <[email hidden]>

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so.

Are you keeping them pumped up really hard?

Roger Thorpe said:

Tosspot said:

KoperniK wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating
from the shattered glass that litters my route?

Schwalbe Marathon Plus. Take a look at

http://tinyurl.com/tzwvz

which for the more regulars appears updated since I last looked and full
of useful tyre stuff. Quick summary, Plus for puncture fairy defense,
XR for longevity.

This service brought to you by a Schwalbe Pimp.

Oh yes, I'd definitely recommend the Schwalbe marathon. With such good
puncture resistance that, when I finally did have to get a repair kit
out the tube of solution looked full, but when squeezed all that emerged
was a puff of vapour!

Me too! However, the 700c tyres are much nicer to ride on than the 26"
ones which never feel properly inflated.

Top Tip:
Marathon Pluses are _very_ puncture resistant, but it's still worth
digging the shrapnel out once a week. I'm amazed at the size of the
chunks of glass that the 26" ones can swallow, but eventually they will
either work through the tyre wall or wreck your floor. (I used them
regularly on the glass littered cycle paths of Peterborough for over a
year after getting daily, or more, punctures with 26" Top Touring tyres.)

Not recommended:
My Subway-8 uberkommuter has 26" wheels and I've been trying Specialized
Crossroads EX 26 x 1.95 tyres as an alternative for a mixed road/hardish
offroad (well it was a Roman road🙂 commute. The astonishingly thick
tread certainly stops punctures, but even at 90 psi they feel utterly
'dead'. I think the poor feel is because of the weight of the tyres.
They're certainly the heaviest tyres I've ever used. I've no complaints
about braking or cornering except on mud. (A quick Wiggle shows
that I'm not using the current version of the EX.)

--
Jan

Jan

Jan Wysocki <[email hidden]> whizzed past me shouting

Quoted message said:

regularly on the glass littered cycle paths of Peterborough for over a
year after getting daily, or more, punctures with 26" Top Touring tyres.)

I used to use Top Touring around Reading (ie lots of broken glass) and
they seldom punctured. Flints now and then, glass never.

Quoted message said:

Not recommended:
My Subway-8 uberkommuter has 26" wheels and I've been trying Specialized

I've got one of them!
The allegedly punctureproof Kevlar OE tyres punctured often (flints
rather than glass) so I'm trying Continental Travel Contact - no
problems with those.

--
Sue ]🙁🙂

Bicycle helmets are really a bit of a scam.
They make most cyclists slightly less safe but there's money in selling them.

Tony Raven wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Try rigging some tyre savers on your wheels. If they are slicks, a loop
of gear wire resting on the surface at the top of the wheel should do
it. It will pull out any bits of glass stuck in the tyre as soon as they
are picked up rather than carrying them round and round pushing them
further and further into the tyre each time they meet the road. Used to
be very common but they seem to have gone out of fashion these days.

Tony

Dear Tony,

Luckily, you didn't mention tire savers in RBT.

If you had, you might see why some of us are a bit obsessive.

Here's a mild reaction to any mention of tire savers:

| Ah yes, "tire savers", as they were known in some circles, were one
of
| those "tossing salt over the shoulder" quirks of bicycling, like
| wiping tires. Among my riding companions the only thing they did was

| to make obvious who had them on their bicycles when the roads were
| wet, because the guy with tire savers was the rider with the dirtiest

| legs. The number of flats had no apparent statistical difference.
| The tire saver guys were there on Wednesday evenings at my weekly
tire
| patch sessions just like the others.
|
| http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/wiping.html
|
| Jobst Brandt

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/1202787bc070229f?hl=en&

If you go to the link that Jobst modestly provides, you'll read that:

"Hence, any glass or other small object would be firmly pressed into
the tire by four revolutions and all exposed glass edges chipped off.
By the time the other tire is wiped several more seconds will have
passed. If the glass is not thoroughly embedded by then it will not
enter the tire."

"This is not to say that particles embedded in a tire always cause a
leak immediately, but that they are irrecoverably in the tire at that
time."

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/wiping.html

Jobst sees no difference between the hand-wiping practice that allows 4
turns and the tire savers, which allow only half a turn. The glass is
either hopelessly embedded or . . .

Er, it's embedded enough to be there, but it promises not to go any
further?

It's worth nothing that Sheldon only hosts Jobst's FAQ and takes a less
absolute view of tire savers:

"These are of dubious value in practice, but may be of help in backward
areas where throwaway beverage bottles are still legal, and glass
slivers are a major problem"

http://sheldonbrown.com/flats.html#tiresavers

So Jobst insists that tire savers are myth and lore, Sheldon says
maybe, and Tony Raven says that they should work.

Somehow I think that Sheldon and Tony Raven would be more willing to
have their minds changed by evidence. Your endorsement is tempting me
to try them, even though I expect that goathead thorns plunge in up to
the hilt immediately.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[email hidden] wrote on 29/10/2006 20:27 +0100:

Quoted message said:

"These are of dubious value in practice, but may be of help in backward
areas where throwaway beverage bottles are still legal, and glass
slivers are a major problem"

http://sheldonbrown.com/flats.html#tiresavers

So Jobst insists that tire savers are myth and lore, Sheldon says
maybe, and Tony Raven says that they should work.

I'm probably more in line with Sheldon - the problem of the OP was
broken glass of the sort that most likely comes from throwaway beverage
bottles.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

KoperniK said:

I've been using armadillo tyres (various kinds) as so far they've offered me
the best protection against broken glass on my daily commute. I'm still
getting flats once a fortnight or so. Slime innertubes are useless - they
just puncture and cause a flourescent green mess bloody everywhere.

Can anyone recommend any bulletproof tyres that'll take the beating from the
shattered glass that litters my route?

Cheers 🙂

Jon

I've had (to date) 400 trouble free miles on normal tubes with slime
in. Maybe run at higher pressure?