Minimalist on-board tire patch kit, roadside repair in action

[Pursuvant]

Universe has a way of delivering, I've been exploring ideas for where/what 3D print job could hide an on-board tire patch kit w/ CO2. Then got that slippy feelz on left turn excelerates, pull over and check rear axle for bearing compression first, all good, then do the rear tire roll, and there she is, the universe delivering me a roadside test of my on-board patch kit.

 

Key tools in my kit

NAPA tire repair tools here

Tire rubber cement here

DoubleTough Inflator here

6 x CO2 16 gram cans here

and you know how to find everything else

Disclaimer - this will kill you and it causes athletes foot fungus

You can jump to the bottom if all you want to know what I'm adding to the kit, for next time, still keeping it minimalist. Now I'm 0nly a couple miles from my garage, so I pull it in home to do the patch, but I'm going to play I have nothing on hand, except my on-board patch kit (the black tape box is the CO2 16 gram cans).

Plus like always, I got a Kershaw knife and pocket flashlight. What, no flashlight? You want to think that out. I got two tools avail in kit, to extract whatever the problem is.

Preserve the air in the tire, by being quick about it when you don't have something plugging the hole. When I pull that nail, I'm going to immediately insert the tip of the patch file. Why is obvious, CO2 will take you from 15lbs to 30lbs easier than zer0 to whatever. Because I'm in garage, we'll just take a look at the air pressure before I pull the nail.

Let's go with the road side fix.  Pull the nail with the mini-side cutters, and insert that file to clean up the injury. But first, step back and just look at the angle and particulars of the injury, is the angle shown by the file acceptable to rope-patch, or is it a "cut" like? This is just so you know if you will run the rope a bit, before replacing rubber, a cut gets new tire asap, reasonable straight holes, not so much.

Guess it's a rope-keeper, I'll run that for a while cause I'm old and senile. OK, before you go tearing away with the file, I think about NOT rounding out the hole inside or outside. I've seen a vid on Revzilla think, that they run the file in then angle all "around the clock" while filing. Want to guess what that does? Increases the injury, size of hole gets opened even larger inside and outside. Let's run the file straight in and out to keep the damn problem small, hey? First I wet that file, and I repeat wetting the file, with rubber cement. While I'm cleaning the injury the file is already delivering a good dose of rubber cement thru-out the injury. Always good to have cement already in the hole, before you plug it with rope. With the file still plug'in the hole to keep the party atmosphere inside, put a rope plug in the insertion tool, about 35%. We are going to push the rope plug all the way inside tire, until about 35% is still sticking out. Note, on a really bad emergency (size of injury) I will put the rope plug in the tool at 50%, and when I insert it I will leave both ends of rope sticking out of the injury a small bit, it's like running two ropes in at once to plug a canyon.

Cover that rope with cement, I mean give it a good bath. We're trying to get wet rubber cement inside with the rope, cement makes it easy to insert rope tool with that tiny handle tool roadside, without cement you would wish for gloves and/or a "T" handle tool.

OK, pull the file tool out of the hole and use the rope insertion tool, and give it to it where she needs fixed, insert (slowly so you don't go too far) until the single end of the rope remains outside about an inch, turn the handle a half turn and pull insertion tool out of the wound, that rope will stay right there.

Messy, overdone, but you want to get home don't you? Grab some leaves on side of road and wipe that excess off a little if you want, you don't want to slip on that pulling back on the road. So how much air did we preserve? Well I did the switching so quick, I had almost 30 lbs of air left in tire. Think about what good news that is. When you patch roadside, be quick about the tool change, and you may have very little left to do as far as air goes. To test my inflator tool, I let the air down to 15 lbs, so we lost half our air doing the patch.

Open up the black tape closed package in our kit, it's got 6 CO2 16 gram canisters ready to load. Get the inflator tool from the kit, close the yellow valve all the way, then screw the inflator onto our tire valve stem, quickly to not loose air. Get out the first CO2 and screw it in (don't bend your valve stem all over the place, be kind to that rubber thingy will ya?). Now open the yellow valve and you hear the rush and see the canister freeze outside as the pressure is released into the tire.

Don't be too quick to assume it's done, those things seem to "freeze up" and fail to release all the available "equalizing" pressure into the tire. I give each one a minute, you see the bottle frost outside on the CO2 canister melt away, then CLOSE the yellow valve before you remove the empty CO2 and screw in a new CO2 canister. OK, just repeat, and you are guessing how many canisters you want to add, because this inflator doesn't have any convenient way to measure tire pressure without removing it. I started with the 15 lbs for the test, I ran 5 canisters into the tire assuming I could get a best case of about 5 lbs or air increase per canister, here's what I got.

Not too shabby, from a start of 15lbs to 41 lbs with 5 canisters, better than I expected. You can run it a bit hot like this if you want, or think your patch is weak/or may not seal, straight to nearest gas station or friend's house. If you feel good about it, let the pressure down to what you run and your call about keep riding or go home and check everything over twice.

Last step, use the mini side cutters and cut that extra rope hanging outside, trim it down close but NOT overdone. It's the last step, like in Africa after they kill an elephant, nobody starts to cut it up and eat until the zombie witch doctor cuts the tail off. To eat an elephant, before the tail is cut off, it like eating dinner without saying grace - a faux pas

Hit's and Mizzes

I can recommend this inflator, the CO2 works fine, the small file & insertion tool, and my small side cutters. What I did not have that I really needed was these things

(1) my cheapo size of a 50 cent piece tire pressure gauge, I was riding without a pressure gauge, idiot

(2) put a couple pair of painters plastic gloves in your kit, kind that are skin tight

(3) two zip lock bags, use one on ground for your "work area" and other to put all dirty kit stuff in to take home

 

That's it. If your not carrying a tire patch kit, knife, and flashlight, you are being a "cool hand luke" and the universe is going to one day "get your mind right", because there has clearly been a "failure to communicate". Don't be luke ... cool hand luke.

All I need now is someone to 3D print a clever way to carry this minimalist kit, it's just a non-descript small black bag on pillion with a cargo net.

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by Pursuvant
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[Triple Jim]

I took out the guts of a small 12v compressor and carry that in the tail bag, along with a plug kit.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Triple Jim

[DewMan]

I use a slightly older model (40001) of this compact compressor with the the SAE battery connector that comes with it:

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I like the newer model with the built in pressure gauge and screw on connector, that my older model doesn't have, but I wish the newer model had the SAE pigtail connector like the older model.

It could easily be retrofitted for an SAE battery connector though, and I think I will and take my older model and put it in the car.