How to Change a Flat Bike Tire: Part 1

Video Transcript

" This is Jim Toledano for Expert Village, talking about changing a tire. The first thing you do after you lay your bike down is take your tire changing tools out of the bag. Remove anything that can break like a computer. Take out your water bottles because they’ll spill. Then you want to undo the break and turn the bike over. Next thing you do is release the quick release. Turn this one way and the other the other way so you’re opening it up making it easy to get the tire out. What you’re trying to do is take the tire off the rim. Put the first one on and then you use the second one to slide it off. This locks so it stays outside of the wheel. It’s sliding around nicely coming off. Notice, you’ve taken one side of the tire out of the wheel, but the other side is still in there. There’s no need to take the whole tire off because you put the new tube in and pop it back on. Now you’ve got access to the tube. Find the valve stem, which is where the air comes in. Pull the tube out around to the valve stem. Leave it here and pull the valve stem out. What you want to find out is what you’ve got. When the tube is completely flat, holding it like this you can blow on it. See if you can feel air coming out of the tube where the hole is. Let’s say your hole is here. You know that it’s somewhere in this area. So you run your hands very carefully because you think it might be glass, and find where it is. If it’s something stuck through, sometimes you can see it, sometimes you can’t. While you’ve got you’re going to go all the way around just to make sure there’s nothing inside here. This is no fun when you spent all the time putting a new tube in. And you blow it again. "