About 3 years ago I put a set of old but unused IRC metros on my SS.....they
had green canvas-looking sidewalls, were about 1.75 inches wide, and had a
knob pattern similar to old-style BMX tyres. The rubber must have been a
pretty hard compound because they didn't lose much tread after 3 years of
constant riding, mostly in the wet.
Anyway, this morning I got a flat on the back so I stopped and patched it
with a glueless patch.....it was on the side of the tube and I checked for
what had caused it but couldn't find anything and so assumed that whatever
it was it must have fallen out of the tyre. About 8km or so later I got
another flat on the back......once I got the tube out I found the hole - it
was right in the middle of the patch that I had put on!!!! A closer
inspection of the tyre revealed a small split in the side wall through which
the tube had obviously bulged out and then gotten pinched. I used a normal
patch (with glue) to patch the tyre and whacked another one over the
glueless patch and got going again. Decided it was time to retire the old
faithfuls and so went to Abbotsford Cycles and waited for them to open at
0800h.
I ended up getting a pair of Schwalbe Marathons (26 x 1.75) and a couple of
new tubes. Once I got to work I fitted them on the wheels and threw the old
ones in the bin. The back tube had 7 patches on it (including the 2 that I
put on this morning) and the front tube had 3 patches. I was sorta sad to
see the tyres go but was also looking forward to riding home on the new
tyres.
The trip home was great.......the new tyres absolutely fly along the road
and now that the goat track at the Chandler Hwy is closed I don't really
need to worry too much about washing out due to lack of knobs on the tyres.
I did take things a bit easier around corners once I was on the gravel but
never felt like I was going to have any dramas.
As an added bonus the tyres have reflective sidewalls that can only help in
the scheme of things. It will be interesting to see how long these ones
will last but I have only heard good things about them so far.
Gags