When I was very young my grandma taught me how to
repair and pump up my cycle tyers.
Now many many years later the “tech” is exactly the same
and I am teaching my friend’s grand kids how.
If they can put those cute little landers on Mars, why is there not
something better for bike wheels ??
Something that doesn’t go flat, doesn’t get punctures?
cheers,
yeah it just bugs me.
The cure little lander on mars is probably wondering why it couldn’t have wheels that don’t get punctures too.
You can use solid tyres which wouldn’t go down or get punctures, but pneumatic tyres are better (lighter, softer ride) and the benefits outweigh the downsides of having an occasional puncture.
I would say because they (the old tube patch kits) work. There may be tubeless tires for bikes the way there are for some motorcycles but they can go flat and the repair is more complicated. Solid tires would give a terrible and possibly dangerous ride. Now once we get our flying cars and cycles -----
My bet is that one COULD get tires (or tyres, but not tyers) such as you describe. But they’d be so expensive that you would not want to buy them.
Your grandma taught you a very valuable skill, and I mean that seriously without any sarcasm. But the Mars lander doesn’t have the options that you have. You can choose whether to get a patch kit for the price of a newspaper, or to kill a major bunch of money on miracle tires. But the Mars lander doesn’t have that option; a little puncture, and it’s “game over”. So that’s why NASA decided to go all out on the best tires they could invent.
I got tired of getting a flat about once a year or so, so I got puncture-resistant tires for my bike. They exist. But if you don’t ride every day, they might not be worth it for you. Or maybe they would be, depending on how annoyed you get at flats.
Once a year? You must not have goatheads in your area.
I average 2-3 a week during it’s season. Record was 5 flats in 28 miles.
There have been a bunch of improvements in recent years: co2 inflators, micro pumps, better valve connectors, tubeless tyres, stick-on patches, puncture resistant tyres, better materials and construction of both tyres and tubes.
With the right tyres and good tubes, punctures are generally rare and you shouldn’t need to re-inflate often. I’ve ridden several thousand kms on my current tyres without a single puncture. With cheap crappy old bikes I used to get them all the time.
There is a thing for motorcycles called a [tire mousse](tire mousse) (most popularly sold by Michelin as the Bib Mousse) that is basically a flexible foam liner that goes in the place of the pneumatic tube and is virtually flat-proof. They have been used in off-road motorcycle races for years, but are getting cheap enough that some regular dirt bike riders use them. Conceivably sometime down the road someone might make one that’s practical to use in a bicycle tire.
Tubeless bike tires are about the best thing ever*, but it’s not something you are likely to find on a kid’s bike. But tubes are still around because they work pretty well for many riders, and they can be used as a last ditch back up on a tubeless tire set up.
Also add “clean roads” to that. Most of my flats have been traceable to nails or shards of broken glass lying on the road. Puncture-resistant tires will reduce the risk, there, as will vigilance by the rider, but a nail can still be hard to notice, and yet pierce the most resistant tire, if it’s in just the wrong place.
I’d put indexed shifting up there.
Of course, you might be a bit young to remember that. 
Unfortunately, no. I remember it well, and still run friction on my cross bike. But it’s been a while since I reached for the down tube shifter before I realized that they are not there.
And now that I have had some time to think about it, I’ll add another improvement that is now well aged - the cassette hub. When was the last time you bent a rear axle? I used to need new axles quite often, but none since I went to cassette hubs.
Be glad you don’t have sewup tires and have clinchers instead.
These are the latest thing hitting the streets in the Uk.
Main website http://tannus.co.uk/
Basically it’s a solid tyre made of a advanced Polymer first developed in Korea.
A casual aquaintance of mines got a pair, which I haven’t seen yet. He swears by them however.
I am seriously thinking of getting a set of these new ones mentioned in the cycling weekly article for my Road bike. No longer having to worry about punctures in those narrow tyres (as well as having to check/keep them inflated the whole bloody time) sounds brilliant.
My kid’s bikes have had them for nearly 10 years! You can buy them at Walmart!
Huh. Waddyaknow. It sounds like those cheap foam tubes don’t do very well in terms of ride quality and weight-bearing, though. Something like the bib mousse (or I assume that tannus tire) flexes and absorbs shocks more-or-less like a pneumatic tire.
Also, I think the tubeless tires Dag Otto is talking about is still a pneumatic tire, just one that seals right onto the rim like a car tire.
I apologize for my bad spelling. Just too tired and now I do not know how to edit it.
I use sewups. I’ve only had one puncture.
Tubeless tires are awesome! I’m running them on my cyclocross bike, road bike, and mountain bike. Only my daily commuter still uses tubes, and that’s mostly because of a lack of options for 32 mm tubeless road tires.