HOW TO remove & change an inner tube the right way: Tips from a Professional Bike Mechanic #2

hi i'm jim from jimthebikeguy.com and i'm here today just to talk to you about punctures tires tubes things like that but mostly punctures and how to fix them a lot of people have a problem with this they find it quite uh difficult to get the tyre on and off and they find it quite difficult to get the tube back in and things like that but there is a principle there's two actually so the things i always stick to are space creation so you're looking all the time to introduce slack into the tire and there's a way of doing that and i'll come back to that in a minute and the second one which a lot of people don't know or don't remember which is always finish at the valve just there so people quite often when they're doing the process of uh refitting a new inner tube putting the tire back on they start working that way around and they try and finish here and it really doesn't work so let's go through it so i'm going to imagine that i've got a puncture and i've taken the wheel off of my bike as you can see here so the first thing i'm going to do is some space creation i'm going to introduce some slack into the system which is handy in this case because these are continental tyres which are extremely good but they are notoriously tight to get on and off that's a good thing by the way you want a nice tight tire but these are frequently tires that people wrestle with so i'm going to start by going around and hypothetically you might be stood in a lay by in the rain now doing this apologies for that but trust me it's about less hay small speed so by pinching the tire all the way around and dropping it down into the well in the middle of the rim which is a basically a way of making the wheel smaller because there's a there's a recess in there if you can get the tyre into that recess all of a sudden there's a lot of slack in the system okay so i'm going to grab my tyre levers from this drawer here as a general rule try and carry three but two is not too bad starting opposite the valve [Applause] okay you're going to get the hook of your tie lever well under your tire there like that open it up and at this point what a lot of people try and do which quite often results in skinned knuckles or lost fingernails as they do this you know what don't do that if you can help it people try and force that around there you're more likely to knife a hole in the tube which you want to save that in a tube if you can you're probably going to damage the bead you're probably going to damage the edge of your wheel as well by doing that so in reality what you really really really want to do is get a second lever work it open and if you find this initial part hard do some more space creation go back around the tire pinch it and you can hear it dropping in to the bead all the way around like that you get to here you'll now find you can do that and at that point take your levers out okay and carefully carefully run your fingers all the way around the inside like that you really only need to take one side off and it's surprising how many people when they are fixing a puncture at the roadside by popping a tube in take both sides of the tire off you don't need to do that at all so let's imagine that this tube in here now is punctured okay for whatever reason so before we do anything else we've got to take it out and we've got to take it out at the valve first so you've got no choice here but to be fairly rough fairly robust with your fingers pull the tire back get hold of it drag it out drag the valve out like that and then just work your way around take it out quite often you'll find this is a good demonstrator actually you will find if your tube has been inside that tire for some time sometimes it almost fuses with the tyre especially if it's been repaired like that so you can see this has got a previous patch there uh it looks like somebody's done a perfectly decent job but the glue around the patch fused its way onto the tyre don't worry about it it's got to come out so give it a good pull get it all the way out and what we'll do i think at this point is decide whether this tube can be saved so we're going to pop that wheel just there for a second you might do this at the roadside or you might just take the tube home with you and do it later but i think for the sake of not littering and for the sake of not not saving the environment if you like i think it's important that you keep the tube so roll it up put it in the back pocket of your jersey or in your rocks like whatever take it home later on decide if you want to keep it and the way to do that is quite simply is find the puncture so put some air into it with your pump like that and then just have a good listen find out where the puncture was from when you were out earlier on and then patch it and we'll cover that in a separate video patching inner tubes is not difficult but it's worth covering that in a separate video so for the sake of today we're going to imagine that you've now done that or you just pulled a new tube out of your back pocket because a sensible rider generally speaking goes out with two tubes possibly even three so this is now i'm just going to let the air out of that so this is now my new tube okay so this is the one that i either just fix at the roadside or it's the one i just pulled out of my back pocket great we've got that ready to go but i'm going to hang that up here because before i go whacking that new tube back in the wheel i'm going to ask myself why did i get a puncture and this is quite important because the biggest mistake if you like that you can make in a rush especially if it's that rainy lay-by situation where you know it's a filthy horrible day your mates are waiting for you you just want to get home take an extra 30 seconds to check exactly why it was that you got a puncture so i'm going to grab my wheel and my tire again exactly as we left it and at this point i'm going to carry out a bit of an inspection on it and i'm going to make those guys wait because i don't want to get 30 feet 30 meters down the road and have yet another puncture because that really sucks that's really demoralizing so what i'm actually going to do is i'm going to start by eyeballing the outside of the tire and i'm literally looking for foreign objects so a hawthorn a flint a piece of broken glass if it is going to be one of those things do watch your fingers really important it sounds obvious but you can do that and very easily go ow so look for the foreign object to look for the reason um that you had the puncture it's a good chance to inspect whether your tyres are still roadworthy at the same time handily so i can see that this one is i mean this tie is not that old it's got plenty of tread it's got plenty of thickness there's no cords coming out of it the bead isn't failing the logos are still good the rubber isn't perishing and cracking when i do that so these are all good things to do at the point where you had a puncture okay so i can see there's nothing on the outside of the tyre the other thing i really want to do is look to the inside so if we have a good look down there that's what the inside of a tyre looks like and handily you can see the point there look where that previous puncture repair had welded itself to the inside of the tyre so at this point using a good bit of daylight and natural light i'm going to do exactly the same as what i just did but i'm going to do it for the inside of the tire so i'm literally just looking for stuff inside finding what it was that made its way through if there is a foreign object in there like i mentioned to you earlier a thorn you know a shard of flint something like that depending on where you live you've got to get it out you've really got to get it out and so for that you might need a pick or a tool of some description it's really important that you get that out before you put a new tube in because quite clearly if you don't you're just going to ride off down the road and immediately get another puncture if you can't find any foreign object but you still had a puncture it's probably because it wasn't the foreign object that caused it it was the tube itself failing and there's a million reasons why that might be it may have failed at the valve you may have hit a pothole and got what we call a pinch flap or snake bite puncture if you like where effectively the tube was just crushed and that was enough to compromise it so not every puncture is caused by something physically stabbing through the tire sometimes the tube itself was the puncture if you like or the valve gave up or or it just burst sometimes that happens unfortunately so that's why we then inspect the tube which we did earlier and we decided whether it was saving so by doing this bit of detective work across the tube and that you can work out what type of puncture you had and you can solve it okay so we're at that point now where we're thinking right we're happy i've got a tube i can use i've got a tire i can use we know we're good my mates are all waiting coffee shops at the end of the road what we really want to do is get a tube in there and get moving so the principle of what we're about to do is exactly the opposite of what we did earlier we're going to do it in reverse so here's my tube there's the valve hole there in the rim and you can see that just there get that valve stick it down through there like that give it a bit of a press so plenty of it emerges underneath and at this point now i generally find it's better to put the wheel on the floor so i've got the wheel on the floor now i find this works better because it gives you the support that you need if you like to do the next part the first part of this job now is using my hands and working in both directions at the same time away from the valve i'm just going to feed that tube in this is the bit that quite a lot of people find fiddly and i have to admit so do i there's not really an elegant way of doing this but all you've got to do really is make sure that at the end of doing this part now you've kind of got as much of the tube inside the wheel as possible so i'm literally getting the last bit in like that okay so you can see the tire is still off but the tube is inside and we're just aiming to get that done right now the most important part and this goes back to the principles i spoke to about the start of the video which is always introduce some space creation introduce some slack into the system and always finish at the valve so if i started where i am now i'd get this very badly wrong because by the time i got around there and tried to get that bit of the tire back on i won't be able to so i'm going to turn the wheel over back to that thing i said earlier i'm going to finish out the valve okay valve's down there this is my start point quite simply using my hands i'm going around and at the minute it's really easy it's really really easy at the minute because there's loads and loads and loads of slack in the system but as i get down here somewhere i'm going to find starts to get much much much harder somewhere around here you can see i'm sort of at 11 o'clock on one o'clock if you like if that was 12 o'clock at the valve so usually what i do around about now is i stop and then go back around the wheel and do that thing again give it a pinch go around give it a pinch and that introduces a load of slack back into the system and hey presto when i get to here all of a sudden it's not as hard anymore okay and you can do it again if you want you can go back around and the other reason that giving it this pinch is really useful is it buries the tube down inside the wheel and stops it from getting trapped when you inflate it so it's a double whammy so again going back round and i've literally got barely anything left to do if you're really really really lucky at this point you might get it back on with your thumbs i have a feeling here now that i would be able to however i'm going to do it with a lever just to show you how to do this next part so kneel down get hold of it like that and this is the bit where you've really got to be careful not to trap the tube which is hiding away in there now somewhere keep your thumb just there like that keep that little bit there of tyre held okay and then work your way in this direction and pop that tire on the rim one finishing at the valve two happy days okay and because i love it so much i'm gonna go around one more time and i'm going to give it another pinch you i really can't emphasize that part enough space creation all the way around it to create slack in the system and also to stop that tube getting trapped should we inflate the tyre now i'm going to cheat i've got a compressor you've probably got a handheld pump or maybe a co2 cartridge if you're lucky one way or the other you've got to get the thing pumped up okay we're nearly there the last part that you really really really need to do is look and see did the tire seat properly so specifically all the way around did it pop up and engage with the side of the wheel and hook in properly if that makes sense and the way you can tell that is you've got this line i don't know if you can see that but effectively i'm running my finger around there and there's a line guide all the way around it's about five mil thick and if i can see that all the way around and the same goes if i flip the wheel around i can see it here and you can also spin the wheel and ask yourself does it look egg shaped or does it look round effectively that's it we're done so the only other small thing which is worth talking about and it is something that people ask me about from time to time is these things so we've got there we've got to press the valve cap and we've got a valve lock ring so generally speaking these things here they go there like that the idea being to secure the valve stem in place it's debatable whether you need to have these or not because as you can see if i take it off and drop it um the valve is exactly where it needs to be and it's supported in place by its own pressure anyway and the worry with having those on is quite often what i find is people have threaded them on and they've threaded them on so hard they've actually ripped the valve clean through the side of the wheel so have a think if you are going to fit them and by all means you can have them um if you are going to fit them don't over tighten them is the most important part so we're going to close the valve down and then we're going to go on to uh valve caps now these are a particular bug bear because it's debatable again whether you need them there are several problems with these um they have a nasty habit of splitting and then getting spat out into gutters and places like that where effectively they're contributing to plastic waste in the countryside and so there's an environmental issue there however small that may be the other issue with them is they actually can trap dirt and water so people think that by having it on the end of there like that it's protecting the valve core and the mechanism if you like but the counter argument would be on a wet day all that really wants to do is store dirt and water inside there which then conversely enough can actually cause the valve core to seize solid i'll leave it to you to decide whether you want to use lock rings and valve caps or not it's entirely a personal choice thing generally speaking i take them off anyway as regards refitting that tire fixing that puncture safely i think that's a job well done and hopefully that's a method that will work for you i hope this video has been useful and informative if there are any comments or questions do put them in the comments below other than that thanks for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe

Channel: David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

Views: 1,302,473

Keywords: cycling, bikes, road bikes, gravel bikes, mountain bikes, tech, reviews, bike reviews, cycling reviews, bicycles, cycles, maintenance, how to, replace an inner tube, punctures, bike servicing, change inner tube, replace tyre, change and replace tyre

Id: Suh1-o6KBo8

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 25 2021