Quoted post said:Originally posted by Rick Onanian
BOn Tue said:Rick Onanian said:I had, in fact, finished engaging the tire exactly 180°
from the stem. I did have a hard time with it (which is
how I snakebit the first tube); the tire was a very
tight fit.
How do you snakebite a tube during installation?
Beats me, but I sure did it. Silly narrow tire.
--
Rick Onanian [/B]
Dear Rick,
Pinching tubes on one side with a tire
lever is a fairly common disaster when
people first learn to change motorcycle
tires and can be done with a tight bike
tire.
With an empty or only slightly inflated
tube and 5/6ths of the tire seated, the
lever is forced under the exposed bead,
which is stretched taut across the outer
rim, and then levered 180 degrees to
force a short section of the bead up and
over the rim.
If the tube is trapped between the lever
and the bead, or between the lever and
the rim, or between the really tight bead
and the rim, it's often pinched hard enough
to split the rubber.
The best protection on a bicycle is to use
your bare hands, pushing the bead up and
over the rim with your thumbs. (I gather that
I've been lucky in never owning bicycle tires
and rims too tight for this technique. It certainly
isn't any Scharzenegger-like muscles.)
For the tires and rims often mentioned here
that require levers, it helps to speak of years
of skill and experience while first lightly inflating
the tube just by blowing into it--the faint bit of
pressure makes it much less likely to trap
a fold of baggy tube while boasting.
If you meant a true snakebite with two
such pinched areas split on both sides of
the rim instead of just one, then things were
really tangled when you heaved the bead
over the rim.
Most "defective" motorcycle tubes returned
by angry customers have been clearly pinched
during installation.
Carl Fogel
