On Sunday, I had the opportunity to pay back some of the kindness afforded to be on Saturday when I experienced four flats on a single ride - 3 of them happening at the top of Mt. Tamalpais. Sundays ride was much better for me. I did the Hawk Hill ride which takes the rider along the Pacific coast just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. After a rather difficult climb, theres an 18% grade down-hill. This is where I met Chris who was standing at the side of the road changing his flat. Based on the fact that he had completely removed the tire from the rim, I assumed that he needed some assistance. I stopped and offered my help. To say that he was struggling would be the understatement of the day. He had already broken one of his tire tools getting the brand new Gator Skin tire off of the rim and couldnt figure out how to get it back on. He had never changed a tube before. I made relatively-quick work of getting the tube and tire back on. Working with a brand-new Gator Skin is not easy! Then, I went to hit it with the CO2. When I loosened the presta valve, it seemed very wiggly to me. And, when I had emptied the CO2 and pulled the tool off of the valve, it immediately dumped all of the air back out. There was apparently something wrong with the stem/valve. Another rider whizzed down the 18% grade and called out his offer to help. I replied by asking if he had a hand pump - thinking that would be a better/easier way to fill this tube given the trouble Id had with the CO2. This guys name was Chris, too. He stopped as quickly as he could and then trekked back up the 1/4 mile of the hill that it took him to stop. He did his best to pump up the tire with his hand-pump, but had no success. No matter how much he pumped, the tube failed to inflate. When he pulled his pump off of the stem - with great difficulty I might add - the core of the valve came out of the stem. Luckily, Chris (with the flat tire) had a patch kit, too. We used that to patch his original tube and used another CO2 to inflate the fixed wheel/tire/tube combo. All was good and we all rode off down the remainder of the hill. So, my question is... have you ever run into this type of valve issue before? Can it be resolved? What can be done to fix this? Did he/I do something to cause the guts of the stem to become so loose or was it just a bad tube that should have been caught by the mfg QC process?
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:13:17 +0000
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