the anatomy of a flat tire

The only thing I have done in regards to cleaning my bike up from the Bearscat50 is fixing my rear flat tire.

On the first lap of the Bearscat50 I hit a rock so hard that my tire compressed and my rim dented pretty good (above).

Further investigation revealed two holes in my tire.

In the tread and on the bead.

These are tiny holes that should have sealed with Stan's sealant but it turns out I had very little Stan's sealant in the tire. I had enough to re-seal the tire for a few miles but it wasn't permanent.

Guess the two cups I had in there when I mounted the tires a few weeks ago went to barely coating the (brand new) tire.

My rim on the other hand took a beating. I've had rims (Crest 29) laced up to my DT240 hubs for two seasons now and thousands of miles. My rear rim has multiple dents in it which I've cold worked back with a pair of vice grips. They've all sealed up again so this dent shouldn't be that much different.

Now the out of roundness in my rims is the real problem as to why these should be replaced. I also can't quite keep the spoke tension proper as the spokes are pretty beat too. I was hoping to wait until this winter to have them rebuilt but looks like that might have to happen this summer.

The good news is I patched my relatively new Continental X-King 29x2.4 tires and they hold air so we're good to go.

Looking forward to more miles on these tires.


In the meantime I'll find my Flow/Hope rear wheel and use that for now. Speaking of Flow rims. NoTubes just redesigned the Flows like they did with the Arches and the new wheels look sweet.