Tyre Booting materials....

[al_yrpal]

+1 for gaffer tape around the inner tube at the split and a piece behind the spit in the tyre. Theres always a piece wrapped around a pencil stub in my toolkit having been caught out once in the middle of nowhere. The fabric strands are great at containing the bulge.

Al

[rjb]

Desperate measures require desperate solutions. On one occasion the rear tyre a conti top touring split near the bead on our tandem, a 2" gash! I didn't have a tyre boot to hand so resorted to unwinding the stokers handlebar tape and wrapping several layers around the inner tube to get us the remaining 15 miles home. Ever since I carried a denim boot and have had to use it on 2 occasions.

[TonyR]

You could use a Bernard Matthews turkey

It'd be bootiful?




I'll get me coat..........

That pun was Norfolk 'n good.

[TonyR]

I've never had to discard an unworn tyre for a cut in the carcass.

I've had problems with brand new tyres going within a few tens of miles with the bead separating from the side wall. No way of riding on with one of those without a boot because the inner tube pushes out through the split and bursts. The extra kicker is of course you fit new tyres for a long tour before you set off.

[TonyR]

With all of these suggested solutions that people carry round with them, have you actually tried them out to see if they work for when you need them in anger?

[Heltor Chasca]

With all of these suggested solutions that people carry round with them, have you actually tried them out to see if they work for when you need them in anger?

Nope! I haven't tried the toothpaste tube yet. Part of me wants to. The other half of me doesn't. I've never used a tyre boot ever in fact.

I saw a BMX on eBay yesterday with a split tyre. The seller described it's condition as 'good'! I also saw some MTB wheels described as 'I've never used these...' But it was clearly evident 'someone' had [emoji57]

Dodgy as you like...b

[reohn2]

With all of these suggested solutions that people carry round with them, have you actually tried them out to see if they work for when you need them in anger?

I've used anorak nylon cloth held in place with double sided sticky tape,and a 250mm length of worn out Gatorskin tyre(bead removed),with great success

[Brucey]

with any tyre booting scheme that uses anything thick and/or relatively inflexible, there is a problem, in that if the tyre splits near the rim, the boot will have to go between the rim and the tyre bead, and be trapped there so that it can reinforce the tyre properly.

Simply fitting some materials (that might work OK under the tread centre) can be difficult or even impossible in the bead location, hence strapping the tube might be a better option (I like the idea of using handlebar tape BTW, that is a new one on me!). (Also; even insulation tape works pretty well for this as a 'get you home' type fix, despite not having any reinforcement per se.; you just need to use enough layers of the stuff).

Also note that a small piece of canvas (of the size that will fit into a puncture repair kit with little folding) will often not be much use except for small mid-tread gashes; if you try to trap it under the bead there won't be enough of it left where you really need it.

cheers

[drossall]

with a lot of booting materials I'd be worried that their sharp edges will cut into the tube.

In spite of my comments about just using a piece of old tyre, that is an issue if you use heavy tyre as a boot. It has sufficient edges to risk damaging the tube.

In answer to questions about using it in anger, yes, a number of times. I also once gave one of my various pieces of tyre to another rider on the Stevenage Start of Summertime Specials, and it got him 40 miles to the finish. I presume he didn't use carry on using the tyre after that - I wouldn't have.

I've found that damage big enough to warrant a boot can affect the integrity of the tyre threads, so you get rapid wear at the boot where the tyre is twisted. I regard a boot as a get-you-home measure if the damage is bad. If it's just a small cut and the boot is very thin, you may get away with using it for longer, I suppose.

[Colin63]

Yes it's basically a patch of material bigger than the cut/split in the tyre that you put inside the tyre between the cut and the inner tube. It needs to be flexible to allow the tyre to keep its shape but non-stretchable so that it stops the inner tube ballooning out of the cut or making the split wider. Doesn't necessarily have to be glued as the inner tube will press and hold it where it needs to be.

Thanks for that. In 35 years of cycling I'd never thought about it. I'll now be paranoid very time I set off for a ride or maybe I'll put a pair of scissors into my saddlebag so that I can cut my clothing up in a crisis!

[Gattonero]

RipStop tape.
Made for repairing tents. Double use as road tyre boot, too. Then, of course, about 1/2mt of Gaffer tape rolled around the pump is a life-saver in many situations (I've patched a friend's shoe!)

[Brucey]

I've just put about 400 miles onto a pretty bad gash in a 25mm front tyre which was pumped up to about 90psi and booted using umbrella fabric

ready for the last rites....

It has opened up and started to bulge alarmingly in the last 100 miles. The thing that looks like the inner tube bulging through is actually three layers of umbrella fabric. There is no sign of the umbrella fabric giving way yet, but the cut in the tyre is getting longer and opening up. If I had to do the job again I'd cut some longer strips that are at right angles to the cut, since the angled cut has really only affected one set of plies.

I think being in the tread area of a relatively narrow tyre gives the carcass a hard time; I've booted bigger holes in the sidewall of wider tyres and it has worked better than this.

Still, as a get you home fix it is brilliant, and as a more permanent repair it seems to work well enough and (importantly) it looks as if it will give fair warning before it fails altogether.

cheers

[Bez]

Toothpaste tube here, cut into roughly 4x3cm rectangles with rounded corners. Pretty sure I've used them successfully in anger.

I did once use a Mars bar as a boot in a mountain bike tyre. And yes, it worked. Ate it afterwards, too, although it was more of a Mars pancake by that point.

[scottg]

Tyvek is a good boot material, FedEx distributes boot material for free.
When cutting the boot out of the envelope include some the flap.
The flap is self adhesive, works to hold the boot in position
on the tire when fitting the tube.

[Brucey]

not tried that myself...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyvek

cheers