flat tire, wheel not true, what a day!

[maverick]

this afternoon, i decided i’d install my new grips for my handlebar (Ergon GP5-S). i’m not what one would call a bike mechanic, so i was pretty proud of myself when i got these on there. installing these was easy – the hard part was getting the ones that came with my bike off!

so, new grips in place, i decide to take her out for a spin and see how the new grips feel. so what if it’s hotter than an oven out there! and i realize that i have a flat! my tires had air in them when i came home last night. i actually checked the air as i left the office.

i come back, fill my tire with air, take her for another test ride, and the air starts to go.

so i decide to head to the lbs (i have about 200 miles on the bike, and they said to bring it in to have the brakes adjusted at about this time, so i needed to get in there anyway). much to my surprise, the inner tube has two little straight line rips in it, parallel to each other. the mechanic said it was caused by the spokes poking through the tape (i’m not sure of the technical term) that is there between the inside of the rim and the inner tube.

we also noticed that the wheel isn’t true, and that the spokes are loose.

i bought the marin highway one at my lbs, and i ordered the bionx pedal assist system from a bionx dealer up in nh. both have 200 miles on them.

i’ve put far more miles on my road bike, and on a mountain bike before that, never ran into this, and have had one flat on each over the years.

is what i’m experiencing expected? part of the breaking in process for the bionx? i haven’t reached out to the bionx dealer yet – i wanted to get a better understanding of what should be expected before i do that.

thanks!

Topic

[vvill]

Flats in general are not predictable, assuming you are riding the right tires for your conditions and have the pressure in the correct range. (Or you have a fat bike )

It is possible that the rim tape wasn’t installed properly at the factory or got moved when the tube was installed. Combined with the spoke issue it resulted in pinch flats – or the loose spoke issue alone was the main culprit. My hybrid went through a spate of similar flats early last year until I put on new rim tape. No flats since then. I like the self adhesive Velox cloth rim tape. The factory thing that was installed on my hybrid wheels was basically a large thin elastic band that moved around easily.

[RESTONTODC]

You really need to trade in these bionx wheels for the mavic wheels. They’re great but support only human power assisted.

It doesn’t sound right. The new wheels should be true unless you hit something.

[jnva]

Normal for a wheel with hub motor – if that’s what you have, don’t know too much about the bionx kit. The spokes that come with the motor kits are generally low quality and need constant adjustment, in my experience. It takes a couple hundred miles before the spokes settle in, if you adjust them properly. I had so much trouble, I replaced the rim and spokes with better quality sapim spokes. Also, get real rim tape and not that little strip of rubber they use.

By the way, how do you like the bionx kit?

[Author]

Replies