About fifty years ago my grandfather taught me how to pump up my bicycle tires.
Almost immediatly he also taught me how to find and repair punctures.
Or totally replace the inner tube.
Now they can put little remote controlled cars on Mars ! why oh why can I not have a modern type bicycle tire?
One that does not need pumping up, ( sorry two ) that do not need patch repairs.
Solid rubber tires have already been tested and found no good, i.e. far too bumpy, which is why pneumatic tires were invented.
There is at least one design for a futuristic airless bike tire, but dunno how well that’ll work.
For now, there are also tubeless tires that you can use either by themselves or with tire sealant that helps protect against smaller flats.
And even if you want to stick with traditional tube-in-tire configurations, you can choose some combination of:
- Flat-resistant tires (usually lined with Kevlar) such as the Specialized “Armadillo”-equipped tires or Continental Gatorskin Hardshells. Disadvantage: Harsher feel to the ride.
- Tire liners, a strip of a plastic that sits between the tube and the tire and helps prevent tube punctures. Disadvantage: Can increase chance of pinch flats even as they decrease puncture flats.
- Tube sealants or factory-sealed tubes. Disadvantage: Apparently of dubious effectiveness.
Personally, on my road bike I switched to All Condition Armadillos 1.5 years ago, keep them properly inflated, and haven’t gotten a single flat since then (whereas with my old set of tires it would be a monthly occurrence). The ride definitely feels worse, but it’s worth the tradeoff in peace of mind and time not spent changing out a tube in cold, wet weather.
There’s self-sealing tires that can take care of minor punctures if you just pump more air in. I had one of those in my work bike once and of course my next tire puncture was so big (multiple glass shards) it didn’t work. After that they installed regular tires again, so I guess they didn’t think it was worth the extra expense.
The pneumatic tyre is one of the great inventions of mankind, so let’s show a little respect here 
There are solutions to punctures, they’re just not at the cost/benefit level of filtering down to the everyday bikes most people ride. Tubeless tyres are now tried and tested on mountain bikes - I have gone years between punctures on the MTB, riding every week on rocky trails that are a pinch-flat festival on tubed tyres. Sealant inside the tyre mends small punctures (like thorns) in situ. The only thing that tends to puncture the tyre is a major sidewall gash, usually from getting things badly wrong on a descent and casing the wheel into a rock.
You can also go tubeless on road wheels, but the technology is not quite as reliable AFAIK - not a tubeless user on the road though so might be underselling it.
As far as not pumping the tyres up - would you like the moon to go on the end of that stick? You need to pump your car tyres up now and again right? And the automobile industry is 100s if not 1000s of times bigger and better funded than the bicycle industry. The unique properties of the pneumatic tyre for transportation dictate that we all need to stick some air in them every so often.
Many cyclists use CO2 inflators now. They’ll inflate a tyre from dead flat to 100 PSI in about 2 seconds.
And yeah, my experience is that with good tyres punctures are rare.
I’ve had good luck with the green slime on my lawn mower tires, but on my bike, not so much for some reason.
I’ve put 1,700 miles on my electric bike the last 16 months, and have had two flat tires during this time, once I was a good ways from home.
Sometimes old tricks might be the solution. My brother said he remember this old timer that we grew up with many years ago that had a bicycle shop, and how he used to handle this problem to basically ensure no more tire leaks. Take your existing old tire, and cut the sidewalls away, and just leave enough surface that will cover the bottom. This tire will go into your new tire. Of course, you want to make sure that this is free and clear from any stickers and what not that will penetrate any inner tube. If not sure, look, and/or slowly and gently rub your fingers on the inner surface. I remember seeing my dad take a file, and rub it all around the old tire on some tubes that were covered with old stickers.
I’m still on my old set of tires, but once they wear out, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m sure it’s not foolproof, but I do think it’ll eliminate a great deal of them.
They’re also incredibly wasteful and generate garbage and have to be repurchased afterward. Pumping the air back to a usable PSI only takes maybe a minute or two anyway; it’s the rest of the flat replacement process that’s a PITA.
Is this kind of like a jury-rigged tire liner? If so, why wouldn’t you just use a strip of old inner tube or a plastic bag instead of a whole old tire?
Yes, unless you’re racing in a time trial or something I have never understood the appeal. Pumping up the tyre is by far the quickest step of a puncture repair.
I think the appeal is that it’s more compact and lighter than a pump. And with many portable pumps it’s hard to get up to >100 psi. But I’ve never used them myself; I carry the Topeak Road Morph which is reasonably compact and easily gets up to >100 psi.
I concur with those who say that with properly inflated Kevlar tires, flats are extremely rare.
Pumping up a 2.4 MTB tyre at the trail side is a bit of a chore tbh, takes a while.
CO2 cannister in the jersey pocket seems popular with roadies. I take it myself for the shorter off-road rides. Anything serious, heading out into the back country say, and you obv should take a pump.
I still carry a mini-pump or frame pump.
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Never run out of pump strokes, but I have had more flats than CO2 cartridges. (OK I did have a pump break once).
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CO2 is a temporary measure. CO2 leaks out of a bike tire much, much quicker than air or nitrogen. Check a tire filled with C02 the next day and I bet it’s much lower than you’d expect.
I agree with good tyres. Specialized Armadillos and Continental Gatorskins greatly reduce, but not stop, punctures. And they still need to be pumped up every couple of days if you have skinny road tires. I use Continental Gran Prix 4000 S’s on my road bike. I’ve had a few flats on them that a Gatorskin would have prevented, but the ride and handling is much better.
I just spent about $150 last night for a pair of GP 4000’s and nice tubes. The rear tire is mostly worn out after 3K miles of riding.
I’ll take this a step further. Why hasn’t the Presta valve been replaced with something that is easier to use and more reliable? I’ve probably had as many problems with and around the valves as I have with punctures. The Presta valve is too delicate and is easily damaged.
If you take a pump with you on a ride make sure it has a flexible hose. What’s worse than replacing a tube on the road only to have the valve snap off while inflating the new tube with your mini pump?
There has to be a better way.
I also run tubeless on my MTB, but it’s not practical for the everyday joe who only occasionally rides his bike. I went from December to March this year without riding it due to an injury, and the problem with tubeless is that the air eventually leaks out, the seal breaks, then the liquid sealant dries out. With a tube that’s not a problem. I had to re-Stans the tires after three months of not riding.
Is that really true? I’ve read that pure nitrogen lasts longer than atmospheric air because the nitrogen molecule is (surprisingly) larger than an oxygen molecule, but it seems like a CO[sub]2[/sub] molecule would be even larger than that.
From experience it is true, yes. I’m not certain of the reason, but I’d think it was more to do with the partial pressure of CO2 in the ambient air being next to nothing compared to 100% in the tyre. So that must drive it somehow rather than the relative differences in size of the molecules (which must be quite small relative to the apertures they are moving through). Sort of analagous to a diffusion gradient, except it’s a permeation process which must be a bit different.
I’d speculate that if you filled an inner tube with a big-ass molecule like xenon it would still deflate more rapidly than air.
I have replaced tubes hundreds of times(goatheads) over the years and never had a Presta snap off or tear out. Of course, I use the rim nut so the cool kids won’t talk to me. 
The partial pressure argument doesn’t work, because any difference that would make to CO2 diffusing out would be canceled out by oxygen and nitrogen diffusing in. And standard gas kinematics would predict that CO2 should diffuse out slower, since it’s a heavier molecule than nitrogen or oxygen.
As I understand it, nitrogen actually diffuses out faster than oxygen, for the same reason. The only advantage to filling tires with nitrogen is that it’s pure, and doesn’t contain problematic impurities (especially water vapor). But you’d get the same advantages cheaper from dried air, and even normal air is very nearly as good.
I’m not sure I but that. If you fill a tire with 100 psi of nitrogen, the partial pressure difference is 88 psi, only 12% lower than a tire filed with 100 psi CO2. And it wouldn’t reach equilibrium with outside air until it’s down to 19 psi.
Is it possible that the regulator on your CO2 is miscalibrated, and that’s why you get a low reading when you check the pressure later?
It’s been a while since I filled one, but my experience is of fixing a flat out on the trail with CO2, riding back home, getting the bike back out in a few days and the tyre being flat (not punctured, can be pumped back up).
By 100% of CO2 in the tyre I mean concentration - so you have both a large pressure gradient across the membrane (tyre / tube) and a concentration gradient. And it is this latter fact that causes the tyre to deflate faster with CO2. If we went for a bike ride on Mars and inflated a tyre with CO2, it would stay inflated longer than one with air (due to the Martian atmosphere being mainly CO2).
It’s possible I am talking bollox here, I admit, but the concentration gradient seems a more relevant consideration than the size of relatively similarly sized molecules permeating through a polymeric membrane.