That one day I had 8 flats on a single route and wanted to scream

Last Saturday I was doing a group ride out on the gravel trails near the river and I got 8 flats in one day. First one was a goathead thorn that went straight through my sidewall. By the third flat I was out of tubes and had to borrow from strangers who started making jokes about my luck. Finally around mile 40 I realized my rim tape had shifted and was cutting my tubes from the inside. Has anyone else had a problem where rim tape slides around on wider gravel rims?

3 comments

3 Comments

burns.jenny1mo ago

Honestly, 8 flats in one day sounds like a personal record I'd rather not break. I had a similar nightmare on a ride near Bend where I got 6 flats before I realized my rim tape was basically doing the limbo inside my wheel. That feeling when you're on flat number 5 and a stranger offers you a tube with a pity smile is just brutal. Ngl, I started carrying gorilla tape for emergency rim tape fixes after that day, works way better than those fancy rolls that shift around. Hope you at least got a beer after that disaster, you earned it.

grantw321mo ago

Eight flats is brutal. I remember one ride where I patched the same inner tube three times before just giving up and walking the last four miles. That pity smile from a stranger hits different though, like you're some lost puppy they found on the trail. Gorilla tape is a lifesaver, I've used it to hold a tire together for the last ten miles of a ride more times than I care to count. Hope the beer was cold and the company was good afterward.

hugo_robinson251mo ago

Read some article about how wider rims need specific tape widths and if it's off by even a millimeter it'll shift around when you hit bumps. That's exactly what happened to you I bet. I switched to using tape that's about 2mm wider than the internal rim width and haven't had slip issues since. Also started carrying a small roll of that self-fusing silicone tape as backup just in case my rim tape goes bad mid ride. You learned the hard way that fancy lightweight tape isn't worth it if it can't stay put on a rough gravel trail.