Real wheel on the winter bike is over the hill - many broken spokes - so I
brought out the fair weather bike temporarily, until I rebuild that wheel.
Hadn't ridden Fair Weather for 2-3 months so wasn't surprised that the tires
needed air, one of them a *lot* of air. The day following first ride, the tire
that needed a lot of air was flat. Figured I had run over something the night
before.
Inspected the tire and found embedded in it 1) a thick splinter of wood and 2)
the business half of a (rose bush?) thorn. Interesting; both of those were a
first for me. Pulled the tube for inspection; saw no holes. Blew up the sucker
to salami size and immersed it in water; no leaks! Considering the two nasties
I had pulled out of the flat tire, no leaks was very wierd. Put a wrench on the
valve ... and found it part way unscrewed! Not just "unseated". So I seated
it; shoveled and levered everything together (different tire); inflated to 90
PSI. Four days later that wheel was still OK.
I remember that I'd always had a hard time inflating that particular wheel on
that particular bike. The pressure gauge on the pump jumped way high on my
down-stroke and I felt a correspondingly high resistance from the pump, but air
didn't want to go into the tube. I chalked it up to either a very stiff valve
spring or some defect in the valve stem. This morning I replaced that valve.
Tire inflates easily.
---
Michael