How many flats are too many flats

[Poider]

G'day, Just wondering how many flat tyres does a person get on average?
I have a fat wheel bike. 4 inch by 20 inch and I have recently had four flat tyres id three weeks and I am curious to know if that is due to the fat wheels or extra weight of electrics.
How many punctures do you get on average over a years or so?
Peter

 

[4πr^2]

Depends on where you ride, tires and to some extent how you fix the flat.

When I am mainly on-road riding on good tires, I'll go years / multiple thousands of miles with no flats. If I'm on thin/worn or race tires, maybe a flat once every 3-4 months. If I go off-roading, we have lots of thorns around here, so not uncommon to pick up a flat every 2-3 rides or even less. Then if you don't extract every last trace of the thorn and make a good patch, it will result in another flat very quickly. Not uncommon to make 2, 3 or even 4 patches after a particularly bad ride. Tire liners are essentially worthless for these. So lets just say I buy patches by the 100's and glue/cleaner in bulk!

 

[ferret]

Riding off road (mountain biking), flats virtually stopped once I switched to tubless. Went from once every few rides to once in a few months.
You do have to air them up more frequently than tubes and remember to occasionally top off the fluid.
Almost no thorn flats, the few rare ones can be fixed with a "worm" without removing the tires.
Pinch flats are also much less frequent than with tubes but usually require installing a tube to finish the ride.

Avner.

 

[E-HP]

G'day, Just wondering how many flat tyres does a person get on average?
I have a fat wheel bike. 4 inch by 20 inch and I have recently had four flat tyres id three weeks and I am curious to know if that is due to the fat wheels or extra weight of electrics.
How many punctures do you get on average over a years or so?
Peter

I'm not sure time is the right metric. It's more about where you ride and how far. Better to go with distance, given the choice between time and distance, since you could leave your bike parked in the garage for half the year on not get a flat.

That said, I haven't had a flat this year yet, and none since I swapped tires earlier this year, so maybe 2000 miles. I've had a couple flats within a month in the past, under the same riding conditions, so some of it's luck and paying more attention to the road surface. I've tried different methods (liner, sealant, etc.), but my current setup is the main heavy duty tube, two old tubes providing additional layers, then the tire. The tube is filled with FlatOut. I carry a CO2 cartridge and tire inflator in my bag, banking on the sealant working if I do get a puncture.

 

[Chalo]

G'day, Just wondering how many flat tyres does a person get on average?
I have a fat wheel bike. 4 inch by 20 inch and I have recently had four flat tyres id three weeks and I am curious to know if that is due to the fat wheels or extra weight of electrics.

I use bikes for all my daily transportation, and I average two to three flats a year.

Fat tires are almost all thin between the knobs, or else they'd be objectionably heavy. Approximately none of them have any anti-puncture belting built in, because they're not intended for practical riding. They're not cheap to buy, but they are very cheaply made, with coarse fabric casings that don't put up much resistance to sharps.

If you ride in the gutter, you ride through whatever broken glass and debris your streets have to offer. Riding in the right tire track gets you out where the lane is swept more or less clean by car traffic.

You'd benefit in every observable way by using a real bike instead of a dwarf clown bike, but if you're committed to this one there are remedies. Tannus Armour (a thick foam tire liner) is available in 20 x 4". Also it is possible to mount 16" motorcycle tires, though that would be egregiously heavy and higher in rolling resistance, as well as difficult to install.

 

[Chalo]

Riding off road (mountain biking), flats virtually stopped once I switched to tubless. Went from once every few rides to once in a few months.
You do have to air them up more frequently than tubes and remember to occasionally top off the fluid.

I'm my observation, the tubeless fad has resulted in users getting fewer flats, but having to fool around with their tires more and longer than when they used tubes. Whether it's a net win depends on your priorities. I like low overhead, so I use armor belted tires with tubes.

Tubeless also produces a lot more scab-caked tires and wheels with corroded rims and spoke nipples. People are quick to donate these to the community bike shop where I work rather than deal with the gross mess, but mostly we throw them away.

 

[999zip999]

I'm just looking to not have to walk my bike out of the horse trails 5 mi back with a 90 lb bike.

I was looking at this and try to order it but the catalog stop selling them they look a little funky.

 

[Poider]

Thank you all for the valuable info