Patching Your Bike's Tubes

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm John Brown on behalf of Expert Village. I am a service manager of High Road Cycles in Wayne, Pennsylvania and today we are going to learn how to pack an inner tube. There are two different types of patches you can use. Either a glue style patch or a glueless patch. You take the inner tube out of the tire, inflate it enough to find where the hole is. Once you locate that hole, you are going to take sandpaper typically included in a patch kit and you are going to scuff up the area around the hole. What you are trying to do is create a good texture for the patch to adhere. What we are going to do next is take the glue which is also included with your basic patch kit, we are going to smear a small amount of it over an area just slightly larger than that of your patch. What we are going to do next is wait for the glue to dry; not dry completely but look as if it were dry. This should take about 1 or 2 minutes. Immediately following that we take our patch with the arm side or colored side down, you are going to press it right onto the inner tube. What this should do is bind almost immediately. At which point if it has been bonded immediately, you should be able to pull it off, you should be able to put it back into the tire and re-inflate it. Now similar concept with the glueless style patch. Take the sandpaper typically included in the patch kit, scuff up the area. Once again, just giving it a nice area for that patch to adhere to. You take your glueless patch which is for all intents and purposes a sticker and put it right over that hole. What I found to work pretty well here is to press it onto the inner tube very well, burnish it in place if you can with your finger or fingernail. At which point you can also once again put it back in the tire, re-inflate and you are on your way. Now that we've learned about the 2 different patches and how to install them, there are pros and cons to both. With the glueless style patch, they are much easier to put on but not permanent so when you get home you will want to replace this inner tube. The glue style is permanent. Once they go on, however more difficult it might be, they go on permanently and stay that way so you can ride this for months and months without worrying about getting a second flat tire from the same hole. "