I ride a bicycle. I bought a lovely 4 oz. can of tire patch cement at an auto supply store a year or two ago, foolishly thinking that my days of dealing with the stupid dried-out little tubes of cement that came with bicycle tube patch kits were over.
No such luck! I went to patch a flat today and found the cement is turning into a gelatinous mass. I think I managed to make the patch work this time using glob of cement that I managed to spread over the hole, but in short order the rest of the cement will be unusable.
Is there any way to restore it back to proper liquid consistency? According to the label, it contains Methylene Chloride, Trichloroethylene, Xylene, and Ethyl Benzene.
Thanks all, in advance.
No, but I’ve heard cement jam is delicious on toast.
If you knew the proper ratio of these solvents, you probably could revive the stuff, but it will probably be at least as expensive to buy the solvents as it would be to get a new can of cement. A lot easier, too.
As a related item - I used to work with leather cement in large quantities, and while we could use leather cement thinner to thin the stuff if it was starting to get too thick in the pot, once the cement had gone around the bend from jelly to jam, it was gone. Attempting to mix in thinner just resulted in a stringy, blobby mess. In other words, even if you have the right solvents, the rubber may have linked and bound itself such that you can’t restore it to a nice smooth state.