Larry Dickman said:In article <[email hidden]>,
Quoted message said:Larry Dickman said:In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] wrote:
> So he made a small hole in his ordinary tube, squirted the Slime in,
> patched the tube, and did fine. He switched to factory tubes as soon
> as he found out about them.
Any thoughts about what to do after a couple of years when the Slime
dries up inside the tube? If you put some water in the tube, will it
reliquify the Slime or do you have to inject new Slime in the tube?
Dear Larry,
Do your Slime tubes dry out?
I haven't had any problem with Slime drying inside my 700c tubes.
I still have 25 of my 36 original Slime tubes, some dating to the
previous century.
The tubes all have numerous patches. They take their turn in my tires
as they cycle through this box and my frame bag:
http://i24.tinypic.com/de5nao.jpg
They've all bled green Slime twice this year.
In contrast, I understand that Stan's stuff is expected to dry out or
congeal inside tubes and require re-filling within a few months.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
I assume so, as they (two of them, one a Slime 700c tube, and the other
a 20" tube that I injected with Slime) would not seal a thorn puncture.
I did not cut them open to check though. It is logical to assume that
whatever makes Slime liquid (water?) will eventually evaporate and
escape through the tube, just as air does.
Dear Larry,
It does seem logical that water would evaporate and escape from the
tube, just as air does, but it doesn't.
Gases like N2, O2, and CO2 are soluble in rubber, with O2 escaping
2.5~4 times as fast as N2 and CO2 escaping about 16 times as fast as
N2. It's a chemical process, not a simple matter of the rubber acting
as a physical sieve.
Water doesn't evaporate appreciably from a rubber inner tube. If
anything, the high pressure inhibits the liquid water from turning to
gas. An inner tube filled with water will be full of water next year.
A rubber lining is basically water-proof.
Stan's tire sealant is known to dry up and is explicitly stated to
require re-filling every few months. His stuff uses volatile liquids
that are soluble through rubber.
Slime doesn't seem to do that.
You can check your punctured Slime tube by grabbing the end of the
tube on the far side from the puncture and stripping it toward the
tiny hole, forcing the Slime toward the puncture. You should feel and
hear the gooshy mess moving and gurgling through the tube and see a
drop of green appear from the hole.
If it does, all is as well as it can be. The Slime is unlikely to seal
the hole in an exposed and inflated inner tube. It works (when it
does) when the pinhole in the tube is flattened against the inside of
a tire--the longer the tiny tunnel through the tube and rubber, the
more likely the Slime is to clog it.
You may be simply expecting too much from your Slime tubes. Slime
works about half the time for me on the pinpricks from goathead
thorns, enough that I find it useful. Sometimes it seals impressive
holes from things like staples, too, but usually not.
Slime certainly doesn't seal worth a damn when I'm patching the bare
tube. When I stretch the tube around the smooth round arm of a bench
vise, I have to strip the Slime away from the hole until no more green
appears and I can sandpaper the area for patching without spreading
more Slime on the rubber.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
