Saturday, 4 July 2020

A puncture, but no flat tyre: why I like Slime

Some time back I installed Slime into my MX60 because - pneumatic tyres and my knowledge of what that brings. Of course it brings some amount of bump compliance, but it also brings the possibility of punctures (you know, popped rubber balloons).

Inevitably I noticed this ...


yep, a puncture to my tubless tyre (because while tubes are a whole different ball game all balloons can be popped.


which is where Slime comes in, it remains "sealed" in the tyre as a goop and when there is a puncture it oozes out carrying its little particles with it, to block the gap, which is exactly what they did.

Clearly this is a large cut and exceeds the claimed capacity to block holes, yet block it it did.

I observed the "ooze" of liquid and wondered what it was, did I run over some snot or something?

Nope, it was just it "doing its thing" letting the water out,but the particles becoming trapped. Pressure was still good 30PSI.

I observed that something was still in there, puffing the rubber out. So wondering if I'd run over some glass or something I decided to look carefully and indeed I could see something still in there. I decided to dig it out. Surprisingly this is what I found:


a small but sharp shard of "blue metal" rock that's commonly used in road surfacing. Clearly it had flung up and striking the rear tyre at exactly the right angle, had penetrated and been pushed in.

This whole episode highlights why on a scooter I didn't want pneumatic tyres, but if you're going to have them, then use slime.



PS

Well I went for a ride this morning and when I put the scooter out in the sun to give it a recharge (its still a bit cold for optimal charging here) I found that there was slime all over the rear guard


you can still see that the hole is wet ... so I'm assuming that its centrifugal force pushing this out, as the tyre is still at 30PSI (where I inflated it to yesterday afternoon and before I went on a ride.



But its still clearly leaking out, so I'll have to see about taking the tyre off and see what if anything I can do from the inside.

So this means that while slime hasn't meant I don't need a new tyre it means I can keep on using it till one arrives (or I try to repair it).

POST Script

having now done the change I put together this small set of videos


and an analysis

puncture is actually just under the shadow of my fingertip ...

4 comments:

Oh Asis said...

Try this in Mt Isa - the flint there even on the road shoulders is viscous. Managed to get a flat within 10 metres.

obakesan said...

LOL ... I'm pretty sure that's where I got this bastard from.

Best Wishes

Unknown said...

Hi can I ask where you managed to order your tire from? I can't seem to find any :( also, how much was it with shipping? Thanks mate

obakesan said...

I got mine from Scooter Hut in Brisbane, shipping was a nice $10.

However I'm probably going to go with something different (which I've already also orderd) which I think is a better tyre. Expect a blog post on that when it gets here.