UKH

I recently experienced a very frustrating double blow puncture courtesy of a recently trimmed hawthorn hedgerow. Try as I might with repairing a puncture at the roadside I had to resort to calling Mrs Kalna early on a Sunday morning to come and pick me up - not a popular choice all round (tyre beads are sooooo tight!)

My mountain bike is much easier to sort out but in bad weather and no call out option when bagging Munros I was wondering if I should carry some instant foam filler to get me off the hills.

Does anyone have experience with using foam fillers / sealant on either presta or Schrader wheel valves for emergency use?

Have you considered slime tubes or going tubeless? I live in a high hawthorn hedge area and after some epic puncture sessions I moved onto using slime tubes, and tubless on my new bike, never had a puncture since.

Edit: sorry misread your post and thought you were talking about mountain bikes. Disregard my tubless comments! Slime still works well though.

I use Schwalbe Durano Plus on my road bike. They have a thin layer of some sort of plastic under the outer rubber layer. They are fine with hawthorn hedge cuttings, glass and sharp stones. However, they are not immune to blackthorn! I am down to less than one puncture a year. Having just said that I be I get another one next week!

Go tubeless.  Best money I ever spent on my mountain bike.  I bought an e mountain bike 18 months ago.  I had 7 punctures in 3 days riding.  It wasn't even serious riding, I was simply trying the bike out near to home.  I took the bike back to the shop and got them to test the rims as I was convinced it couldn't simply be bad luck.  They recommended going tubeless, I did and I haven't had a single flat tyre since.

Al

I have resorted to carrying a pack of instant patches in addition to the standard spare tube.  More specifically, I have also acquired one of these https://www.fumpapumps.co.uk/shop/minifumpa/ after a friend whipped his out, so to speak.  I had recently also had several bad attacks by the puncture pixies, including two 'calls of shame' in as many weeks.  Tubeless on road bikes is the work of the devil.

I’m tubeless now, but on a previous bike (where I didn’t wish to go tubeless) after a bad run of 6 punctures in 2 weeks due to thorns, I went for a belt and braces approach. I used the tube protection tape (can’t remember the name now but advertised as puncture proof tape usually that sits over the tube under the tyre) along with slime tubes!! Never had a puncture after that during the remaining three years I had that bike.

Tubeless though had been very good for the couple of years I’ve used it on my replacement bike, but it is, of course, still possible to damage the tyre beyond repair possible in the hills. However, plugging repair kits you can get do a great job and I’ve had a 6 mm cut repaired by an emergency repair kit bought.

My son put (Proper) slime innertubes in the wheels of the bike he uses round Edinburgh - not had a puncture in 3yrs.

Try changing your tyres - some tyre/rim combinations are notoriously tight. I've got Conti GP4S on my bike and they are known absolute nightmare to deal with.

Nope - never used it.

Mountain bike I would go tubeless and when out in the middle of nowhere also have the tubeless tyre repair kit, mini bottle of goo and finally a pair of innertubes.

Road bike I have armadillos. Slower and not as capable as some tyres but more than enough for me and are as close to bomb proof as possible. Do carry a tube but given how nightmarish it was getting them on I suspect if i do puncture it would be  cry of help time.

Thanks for the replies so far everyone. I probably should have clarified the recent punctures were on my gravel bike but I use a mountain bike for accessing Munros.

There seems a strong verdict for tubeless on mountain bikes, does it matter if the bike isn't used for a couple of months at a time?

Not really, in my experience it takes a few weeks to properly seal when I might have to pump them up every few days, after that they hold pressure as well as tubes. Ive put some more glue in every year or so but it's a dead easy job with removable valve cores and a syringe from a brake bleed kit. Be aware they can be a faff to set up and if you do rip a sidewalk or somthing they can be nigh on impossible to get off. However it's never happened to me or anyone I ride with and I've certainly never looked back.

Not that I’ve experienced once it’s setup and is fully sealed in the rim. One of my bikes this year was not used at all for 6 mths with all the C restrictions, and it was just under the normal pressure when I did take it out as I run it at.
Remember that you need to top up the sealant over time as it goes off over time (I think I read somewhere it’s temp and humidity dependent). I check regularly and if necessary do it every nine months or so; sometimes it needs a lot, other times just a small amount.

Tubeless, tubeless, tubeless. 

I have found folding tyres much easy to get on or off the rim.

Whatever happened to slipping a spare tube in the back pocket, along with some instant patches and a minipump?

Tyres you can't get back on the rim and a pump that, if it works at all, takes about a half hour struggle to reach any kind of pressure. I've thrown away four. CO2 pump is a better bet.

That gets a bit boring if you ride over some blackthorn and shred both tubes especially if it is cold/wet.

My full sus is tubeless and the only attention I have had to give it was at home in the warmth when i pulled out a bunch of thorns and then topped up the sealant. My hardtail currently is tubed and think worse was four punctures in one ride which considering it was just above zero wasnt fun. I will be switching it over in the next few weeks as it comes out more for winter.

Try something like that: https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/bike-presta-schrader-puncture-repair-spray/_/...

I used it once - it was good enough for 1 hour ride back home.

That could be just the ticket! Thanks.

The Conti GP4S "are" folding - and still notoriously tight.

Conti GP4S and Easton rims was a combination from hell I would never go back to.

The videos I've seen of people changing tyres always seem to have very easy fitting examples. Never someone swearing at their ruined finger tips or thumbs!

Tubeless is the way to go, but I think the liquid goo tends to become viscous after around 8 months to a year, and may no longer instantly seal a puncture as well as it did. In that case, remove the valve core and inject some fresh liquid into it and it will last another year.

A couple of months unused should be fine as long as it isn't stored too warm. It might be an idea to rotate the wheel now and then (or ride round the block) just to mobilise the liquid. 

If your gravel bike has tubes I guess you can do the same as above, as long as the valves have removable cores for injecting liquid. I've done this on my road bike and despite riding over hedge clippings, I haven't had a puncture yet.

That's an interesting observation as I have those  and found them quite ok to mount. No doubt there are small differences in the sizes of rims which may explain it.

Rims make a larger difference than the tyres themselves, in my experience.

I've never tried tubeless, but I found slime to ruin wheel balance to a significant degree on a road bike. On a mountain bike this may be less noticeable.