Long story short, I bought a cheap bike off marketplace to get back into cycling again and I've blown 3 tubes. I need to figure out what's happening or help diagnosing it.
Tube #1 was blown because of improper seating of the tube, Tube #2 I made sure everything was right and inflated to the proper psi and it sat there for 3 minutes and all of the sudden boom. I took it to the local bike shop and they installed a tube and I rode for about 3 miles and had the blow out shown in the picture above. What could I be doing wrong? I am a heavy rider but I also rode a smaller bike in the past for 30 miles at the same weight.
by cutmylifeintopizzza
7 Comments
What does the interior of the rim look/feel like?
run your fingers on the inside of the rim and tire and see if anything is sticking through popping the tube. Pro tip – use a cotton ball to rub the inside of the tire and rim to see if anything is grabbing cotton. Sometimes a small sliver of steel goes through into the inside of the tire wall and you will miss it with your fingers but the cotton will catch on it.
Is the pop on the inside or outside of the tube? (tire side or rim side)
Your pictures look like catastrophic failures. Does the tire blow off of the rim each time this happens? If so, I think you have an incompatibility between your tire and the rim or possibly the hooked part of the rim is damaged. The only other thought would be that you are way exceeding the recommended psi for the rim and tire combo.
Your tire is not seating correctly to the rim, it’s ripping off of the rim, causing the tube to pop out of the rim and exploding like that.
Inflate the tube until it’s at 3-5psi before installing it, make sure none is caught under the tire bead and the rim, push the valve up into the tire as that’s where the tube often gets caught under the tire and wedges the tire out of the rim during inflation.
Then, when you inflate to 30 PSI, check the bead all around the rim for proper seating and no area are excessively out of the rim. Then inflate to full pressure and check again.
If that doesn’t work either your tire bead or rim lip might be destroyed.
That’s a genuine blow-out – the tire probably came off the rim.
Take the tire off and check the rim for dents or out-of-round places. If you find one, take it to a bike shop and get an opinion on truing it or replacing it.
Give us your weight, your tire PSI and tire width.
I would start by taking it back to the shop where you got the tube installed. Unless you got exceptionally unlucky, they did something very wrong during installation. They should cover the cost to replace and inspect the tire/wheelset more carefully.