Recap

Well, maybe you caught the first bumbling installment of this series, where I demonstrated that it CAN be that hard patching an inner tube! One additional thing to look out for, that I didn’t mention, is that you have properly sanded down the area around before patching, because tubes are prepared with a layer of some kind of non-stick substance, which doesn’t help the adherence of the patch much!

Having failed to properly patch the inner tube on my newly-bought bike (see archive!), I realised that I WAS going to use one of my precious spare inner tubes and just put a new one in.

Changing an inner tube

Piece of cake, right?! Just pop off the tyre, pop the valve through the hole in the…

DOH!!!

You’re not seriously telling me that there are different-sized holes in the rim for different valve types, and that this sort won’t fit my wheel rim! Yes siree, apparently so! But of course you knew that! Well, just remember that once upon a time, you didn’t!

So, time to read up…! The two most common kinds of bike tyre valve are apparently the sort of “car-tyre” type, as mine above, which was fine for my old bike, but not this one evidently! By the way, this is called a “Schrader”, “Schraeder” or “Schräder” valve, depending on how you want to transcribe the German. The other is the Presta valve, the sort of thin needle-shaped type that is needed by my rim!

Off to the bike shop then, to spend another unplanned-for 150 dinars (2 Euros, he he) on a tube with a Presta valve and, hey presto… I mean, Presta…

…smiles all round!

So you see, it CAN be that hard changing an inner tube! Especially if you’re more interested in getting out there and riding, rather than messing about going to and fro from the bike shop (on foot or on your disintegrating old bike) .

By the way, I hear tell that Schrader valves CAN be fitted to a rim with a smaller hole by the simple expedient of… drilling out a bigger hole. Again, don’t try this if you don’t know what you are doing, because for all I know this weakens the rim structurally!

Next time on “It Can’t be THAT Hard”: adjusting the front derailleur!

(I’ve got a bad feeling about this…!)

P.S. By the way, if you are in the US, check out a load of bike maintenance books on our online Amazon-powered store - find the link on the right of the bike gadgets page. You’ll probably find out a whole load of more useful information than here!

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Posted on February 7th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: Bike repair, The Bike!