In a current thread, the topic has wandered off to Rema patches,
whether they can be peeled off, and what happens if you ride off on a
freshly glued patch.
This is where the thread began discussing patches:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/6d3d853c1c4fe8ce
Today, I pulled the tube out of my rear tire, lanced it with a
sharpened spoke, laid it on the customary round arm of my basement
vise, scraped at it hopefully with the cheese-grater built into my
patch-roller, brushed some Rema glue on the tube, waited five minutes,
put a Rema patch over the hole, ran the metal roller over it wildly,
popped the tube back into the tire, inflated it to 110 psi, put the
wheel in my bike, put on my costume, hunted around for my camera bag,
and rode off 17 minutes after I brushed the glue onto the tube.
At 13.5 miles on my daily 15-mile ride, I noticed that my rear tire
was going flat and stopped. Rather than change the tube, I just pumped
it up with my Topeak Road Morph and finished the ride.
As I suspected, the problem was a goathead puncture unrelated to the
test patch. The slime tube sealed things well enough to get home.
(It's not unusual for me to find several slow leaks when a tire
finally goes flat, and this one had lasted since January, an
extraordinary life-span partly due to missing almost a month of rides
due to snow.)
When I carefully peeled the patch off about 90 minutes after I put it
on, the patch came off about as reluctantly as the other patches that
had cured for 2 months or longer and had never been ridden.
There's arguably less black on the test patch's orange surface, but it
was stuck very, very firmly to the tube.
Here are 5 Rema patches, all peeled off my 700c inner tubes:
http://i16.tinypic.com/4361kx0.jpg
Left-click on the lower right in Explorer for a picture large enough
to see the tiny cross-hatching on some patches. Hard-to-see black
lines show where seams ran under the patches.
A-cold carefully peeled C-cold quick peel, 2 pieces
cured over 2 months cured over 2 months
black less black
B-cold quick peel, 2 pieces D-hot carefully peeled
cured over 2 months cured over 2 months
less black much less black
E-test patch
cold carefuly peeled
ridden 17 minutes after glue applied
removed 90 minutes after glue applied
much less black
A, B, C, and D were patched and stored as spares for at least two
months before being peeled. Those four patches were never ridden on.
E was rolling within minutes of the glue being brushed onto the tube
and was removed after touching the tube for only 90 minutes.
No patches showed any sign of air separating the patch from the tube
at the puncture, much less any Slime fluid intruding.
Slow, careful peeling removed A intact.
Quick peeling ripped B & C off the tire in two large chunks, leaving
edge material behind on the tube.
Heating with a 100 watt light bulb helped the color of D, making it
more orange, but the patch still seemed just as hard to remove. (Much
more heat might have let it peel off easily.)
All five patches came off very, very reluctantly. A normal person
would probably say that they couldn't be peeled off. Only a truly
silly RBT poster would scrabble at them hard enough with his thumbnail
to remove them.
As far as I could tell, there was no real difference in how tightly
the patches stuck to the tube, but a patch might well peel off a tube
right after gluing.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel