On my recent touring holiday, I had a couple of equipment failures, a fairly bad cut to my rear tyre by a sharp edged stone on the Bairnsdale to Nowa Nowa railtrail, and a derailleur pulley failure. More on the derailleur pulley another time.

I was carrying a spare Schwalbe Stelvio folding tyre, but it was not very suitable for use on a gravel railtrail.

What to do?

What I did have in my tool kit were some tyre patches - large, flexible, self-sticking, clear patches for exactly this use. The ones I carry are Park Tools Emergency Tire (sic) Boots. I don't know if other products of this type exist, but they probably do and I just haven't come across them. I've used the Park Tools product before with success, but they do have limitations.

While checking my bike after admiring a trestle railway bridge, I noticed a tiny bulge of tube making its bid for freedom from my rear tyre. Closer inspection revealed a cut in the shoulder of the tyre. Out with the wheel, off with the tyre. The outer cut was maybe 8 - 10 mm long, while the inner penetration was perhaps only 2 mm long. Still, there would have been a blowout in the immediate future and thankfully I spotted this. I guess there's a lesson to check equipment often, especially when putting it under stress.

The integrity of the tyre casing appeared intact, that is, there was no bulging or distortion to indicate that too many of the casing threads had been cut. It was a rear tyre, and I decided to patch the inside of the tyre to provent the tube from escaping, and ride on. Then when I got to the sealed roads again, I could replace the damaged tyre with my spare.

So I used one of the Emergency Tire Boot patches. They are are about 40 x 70 mm (45 x 76 I see from the web page). I cut off a piece about 45 x 20 and placed it lengthways over the cut inside the tyre. They are self adhesive, so holds in place. Put it all back together again and it appeared to be sound, though the external cut was flared open, so susceptible to further damage. Still it was not on the top of the tyre, so should be OK if treated with some respect. All I asked was that it survived another 50 kilometers of railtrail.

While this worked satisfactorily for the 50 kilometers, I pushed my luck and rode on for another three or four days. However, it is a temporary repair, I should have replaced it once I hit the bitumen.

I've noticed in using these patches that they are susceptible to loosing their flexibility and cracking over a few hundred kilometers and a few days. This can subsequently be the cause of a puncture! I was not disappointed on this occasion. A periodic ssss, ssss, ssss indicated that the tube had punctured while I was descending a hill. I shouldn't have been so lazy. Sure enough it was the failed patch that had cracked. I was around 30km from the end of my holiday, and it was a fine day with a pleasant spot to stop and make repairs, and an inspiring view over the gentle hills of southern NSW. I patched the tube, put another patch on the tyre and finished my holiday. That tyre has now joined the countless generations of its ancestors who served us well during their worthy life.

As a temporary repair item, I think these tyre patches are a worthy addition to the tool kit. They weigh only a few grams and as they are flat, they can easily be fitted in a tool kit.

Other alternatives might be:

• A spare tyre suitable for the terrain
• A few centimeters of old tyre with the bead cut off to use as a tyre boot
• An Australian plastic currency note. A plastic $5 note folded to suit the requirement should serve well. Use a larger denomination only if needs must or socio-economic distinction is an important personal issue...
• Use your imagination to use any flexible non-stretch material that might be at hand. 

You can read a little more about the Emergency Tire Boots at
http://www.parktool.com/products/detail.asp?cat=17&item=TB%2D2

Such repairs should be considered as emergency repairs to be replaced as soon as possible and ridden on with due caution!

If you can cautiously ride back home, or to the next town, it can save a lot of inconvenience, not to mention the satisfaction of solving your own problem.