Tubular tire repair experience anyone?

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Permalink Reply by Mr. President on October 7, 2009 at 5:42am

In my first experience with tubulars and dugasts I completly bothced the job and ruined base tape and tubes.

Sent them to tire alert and with in a week I had two dugasts back with new tubes and new base tape.

Very impressed and worked great, only like $40 for 2 turnaround. It is worth it and he does great work.

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Permalink Reply by JMack on October 7, 2009 at 5:52am

I agree, I've thought about doing the repairs myself, but I know quite a few people who ahve had good experiences with tire alert. Mine are going to Florida.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Dolan on October 7, 2009 at 6:55am

I've watched one of my friends successfully sew up a tubular, and to put it bluntly...it looked like a giant pain in the ass. He's also an old school bike mechanic. I'm a pretty decent mechanic, but I don't think I could do this repair myself. Just watching it gave me shivers. If you can swing it, I would save the aggravation and send them out.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on October 7, 2009 at 8:23am

I purchased a grifo XS that has been repaired on CL for $35. It has been perfect so far ~3 races and some super-secret training sessions. One thing is to make sure and ask for a removable valve-core (or just a long valve stem) if you're sticking the tire to a deep-dish wheel. My tire has the non-removable core so I'm stuck with the designed-by-a-chimp Zipp extender.

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Permalink Reply by FallDownGoBoom on October 7, 2009 at 12:39pm

I've heard plenty of good feedback here and elsewhere on Tirealert.com and decided to go that route. There's no way in hell am I trusting my sewing skills and basetape attaching skills on an intentionally underinflated and abused CX tire! I would rather have sent my kids to sleep over at Michael Jackson's home... what, too soon for a joke?

Just got a call back from Ron at TireAlert. $46 all in for 60mm valves with removable cores and lightweight tubes for TWO tires - what a deal!! He's pretty busy, and said it shoud take about 2 weeks, so that's reasonable. They pay for return shipping.

If anyone is interested, I can post an update and/or photos of their work when they return.

I guess I'm heading home tonight to set up a front wheel with hutchison bulldog tubeless as the next best alternative for the time being. I miss my snobby tires already...

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Permalink Reply by andrew on October 7, 2009 at 4:54pm

glad to hear you've found a solution - do post back on an update and maybe an inline pic or two.

if you need any help on tubeless, come back here or pm me... i may ride tubeless this weekend at surf city as we've had a bunch of tubular problems lately.

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Permalink Reply by FallDownGoBoom on October 26, 2009 at 11:27am

What not to do to maintain the life of a Dugast...

So, last week I got my two tires back from Tirealert.com and I wanted to provide an update for those who have tires for repair.

The repair cost me $23 per tire, which is for a long-stemmed new Butyl lightweight tube with a removable valve core. No valve extenders needed anymore, and unfortunately there is no latex tube option. As to the weight post-repair, I have a comparison tire and they are a little heavier than latex tire, but minimal. What is noticable is the increased stiffness of the tire. It's not like going back to clinchers by any stretch, but it is certainly not as supple as the comparison tire with the original latex tube.

The seam under the base tape is a bit bulkier than the original seam, but it didn't interfere too much with the glue job. The thickness is due to the repair, and there's probably no way to avoid that with industrial sewing machines. I was still able to get good adhesion, and had no rolled tubulars yesterday. Those who did yesterday's Bay Area Super Prestige race at Coyote point will attest to the fact that there were several high speed, off-camber, root-laden and bumpy places that could (and did in at least two instances) cause a tire to easily roll off a rim.

Note the thick resewn seam under the base tape, long stem, removable valve core.

One last note - I also have a tire that JUST had the base tape redone, and it looks GREAT!

Ultimately, am I pleased? Heck yeah. $23 per tire, and they're 95% as good as new. Much better than crying myself to sleep over a ruined $120 tire.

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