What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[REPO Man]

Losing air slowly overnight or during your shift points to a pinhole leak. This would point to either bad rim tape, leaky fill valves, or possibly something embedded in the tire that is putting pinholes in your inner tube.

And it must be something in my yard or on my porch, since that's where most of my flats seem to occur.

Or maybe somebody just likes letting the air out of your tires and is scared to climb into your porch to do it.

Except the last flat was when my bike was on my porch. Strangely on the same side I got my previous two flats AND where my dad got his last flat. But... what's interesting is that all those, save for my last, were when the bike was parked right next to my steps.

This is probably a solvable problem. Check out this discussion thread:

https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-mech ... t-why.html

Like I said, it's probably something in my yard or on my porch. If it was something between the road in front of my house and where I park my bike, then why do most of my flats occur after I get home?

As for something in the rim itself, that wouldn't explain the fact that it's not always the same tire that goes flat.

But it seems like the culprit is something on the south side of my porch.

[marurun]

Well, that wouldn't explain how after I started parking the bike on my porch (and carrying the bike to and from the porch to the road), I wouldn't get flats, but only after parking it on the other side of the porch did my tire go flat.

More than likely it's something on the south side of the porch since I never had this problem until sometime after parking on the south side of the porch..

OK, but do you have any reasonable explanation of how where you park your bike would affect your tire air? I cannot think of anything. It honestly sounds more like coincidence.

[MrPopo]

Well, there's the whole part where one side of his place is covered in broken glass and the other part is clean, but I don't see what difference that would make.

[Ack]

Yeah, I noticed I have problems with my bike whenever I park it in the nail yard where I keep all my nails for hammering. No idea why.

[REPO Man]

All I know is what I've told you.

I literally keep getting flats when I park in a certain spot, but not when I park it somewhere else. And it can't be someone fucking with the bike since my dad had the same problem.

[MrPopo]

Yup, no chance that someone who is fucking with you would also want to fuck with your dad.

[REPO Man]

Besides, if it was a problem with the tire, the rim, the bike or the particular route I take to work, why did the sudden flats stop when I started parking my bike on the north-facing side of the porch and carrying my bike to and from the porch and road? And why is it that I suddenly got a flat overnight after parking the bike on the south-facing side of the porch?

Quite frankly the logic doesn't hold up! In theory, if it WAS something on the ground I kept running over, it would have been in my yard. And yet that still doesn't explain my most recent flat.

[marurun]

I think where you parked your bike is purely circumstantial and there's something else going on. Unless there is an identifiable threat to your bike, that wouldn't make sense. Your bike doesn't care where you park it. So unless you can identify an actual environmental hazard you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

[REPO Man]

Well, obviously there's something on the south-facing side of my steps AND something on the south-facing side of my porch. No one has any reason to fuck with my bike.

[Limewater]

You didn't read the thread I linked, did you?

It sounds like you are getting slow leaks in your inner tube. If you try to air up your flat tire and it won't hold air at all that's a different story. The tube appears to go flat overnight because it has a slow leak and that's the time when it's furthest from being inflated and when it's ignored for the longest period of time. It went flat at work because it got a slow leak and then sat for eight hours, losing air the whole time.

If there's something on the south side of your porch that is causing slow leaks in your inner tube, there's a very, very good chance that whatever you're picking up over there is getting embedded in your tire and will eventually put a pinhole in the next tube you install.

That is why I am suggesting you check your rim tape. The thread I linked also suggests inflating your leaking tire and holding it underwater to look for pinholes. A lot of times bike tires will pick up tiny, barely-noticeable bits of wire that can work through and put a pinhole in an inner tube.

If something pokes all the way through your tire and through your innertube, it's probably still embedded in the rubber of the tire. It is not very common for something to stab all the way through a tire and not leave a trace.